Gail Platt over in Coronation Street is looking even more like an outraged haddock over the treatment meted out to her pregnant 13-year-old daughter Sarah-Lou now that the news has got out. This is the Street's most shocking storyline to date, and it is interesting to see how the writers are developing it. A clue to how the future will pan out came in the ugly little scene a few episodes back when a lustful builder took a fancy to trans-sexual Hayley and then humiliated her and husband Roy in public when he found out she used to be a man. The Street came to the rescue in the burly shape of bould Jim McDonald ("These people are friends of mine, so they are, so they are, etc, etc") and bigmouth builder was dispatched in short order.
Casting back to when Hayley first revealed that she used to be a he, many in the Street were intolerant and insults flew thick and fast before the innate goodness of the character (and wonderful acting by Julie Hesmondhaugh) combined to make her accepted and now - except for that signpost scene with the builder - Hayley is very much a part of the Street.
The builder scenario was Coronation Street's reminder that the show does have teeth sometimes, and what Hayley suffered will be as nothing compared to the odium in store for the Platts. Sarah-Lou's best friend's Mam has banned her daughter from seeing Sarah Lou (a most unlikely brazen hussy) and there is already a whispering campaign (or in the case of Deardree's mother Blanche, shouting campaign) about Gail's maternal fitness. And what price stepdad Martin's promotion - he's a nurse - once the news becomes even more public? We'd lay money that glamorous Grandma Audrey's social climbing on the council will get a knock, too. And Nurse Rebecca, Martin's illicit fancypiece, to use Corrie-speak, will surely one of these days say "feck this for a game of cowboys, I'm off".
The Platts have weeks - actually, probably the three remaining months of the confinement - full of agony and ostracism in front of them, but one thing is certain; in the magical world of Corrieland no problem can't be solved through solidarity. The spirit of the Blitz - never mind Ealing comedies - is alive and well in Weatherfield, and the community that is Corrie will eventually close around its troubled members. With the odd exception, the Street is a sprawling, extended family, in many ways caught in a timewarp, and once the baby's born the street is sure to have recovered its customary common decency, and we'll have Blanche knitting bootees and perhaps even Les Battersby constructing pram mobiles out of empty lager cans.
The writers and producers have handled the issue well, helped in no small part by the talent of Tina O'Brien, the young actor (I believe she's 16) who plays Sarah-Lou. Lucky, isn't it, now we look back, that the old Sarah-Lou went upstairs one day (as her brother Nick did before her) to listen to tapes and came down the stairs some time later - a totally different person. Amazing.
By avoiding the build-up to the pregnancy and the mucking about with the wee boy who's about to be a father (surely he's going to become part of the picture at some stage?), any hint of bad role models for youngsters has been avoided; but at the same time her downbeat description of proceedings to her friend - it was all right, over very quickly - was preferable to a horror tale of advantage taken and emotional scarring.
In EastEnders, the dreadful Di Marco family will soon be as dead as yesterday's bolognese sauce, it was announced this week, and Desperate Dan, the cuckoo in the nest at the Old Vic, is toast, too. There are many other characters in soaps that it might be no harm to get rid of - either for their general uselessness as characters, or because they've just become really irritating. But surely someone should suggest getting rid of the whole shebang at Brookside Close (though successive bombs, gas explosions and plagues don't seem to have had much of an effect) and scrap the series entirely. Long the poor soap-relation in terms of ratings, it was once at least innovative in how it tackled issues.
But latterly it has had a series of totally unbelievable - or else boring - storylines and characters. Things have got so bad that in the past few weeks we've had twice-married (to each other) Susannah and Max on and off at the drop of a frying pan. Or indeed at the drop of his pants, as he more and more ridiculously gets himself into real or imagined liaisons with the neighbours. And now Susannah has taken up with whispering Mick - there they are, snogging in the corner of every frame. Then there's the daft yuppie love triangle involving overwrought Victoria, the drug baron and the good guy doc (he has a touch of the Mark Greenes - of er - about him: strong, supportive, and balding too). And the posh nobs-in-law visiting relentlessly vulgar Ron Dixon was too silly to be even farcical.
Mind you, there was a slice of hope on St Patrick's night with a totally camp, over-the-top episode which indicated that someone over there may have an ironic sense of humour after all. On Brookside Parade (a tiny local row of shops, mind) they were having a celebrity reopening, and there was a comedy of errors with conflicting bookings and confusion. Picture the scene - the two boyos behind the bar dressed as leprechauns, Bev (it's a breath of fresh air to have the dead common Bev back - and with the money to buy Bar Brookie) in an over-sized Irish dancing costume and shillelagh earrings, with her star turns for the evening - the Nolan sisters. The other celebrities arrive - Graham Norton and Carol Smyllie make it an incredibly navel-gazing, camp experience, with everyone singing I'm in the mood for dancing, romancing . . . Maybe they should reinvent Brookside as a cartoon.
