IT'S a sick, sick world. Soaps, diversions for the masses, often deal with big, serious, important issues and can play a role in highlighting social problems or experiences. Now, mustn't laugh, but sometimes the way they deal with Important Issues can be risible or clumsy. Over on Albert Square it's like a women's health clinic these days: on the one hand, Irene is going through the menopause, with her moods swinging hither and thither between hot flushes, and on the other, Queen Vic landlady Peggy Mitchell has just been told the breast cancer is back and she should have a mastectomy.
Breast cancer is very far from being a laughing matter, of course, but you wonder if it isn't just a tad tasteless that the character they choose to be thus afflicted is played by Barbara Windsor, whose breasts were once synonymous with Carry On films. And it's difficult enough to empathise with diminutive, overwrought ball of fury Peggy - Windsor was not designed to do high drama.
When Nina, resident ex-hooker-turned-barmaid, accidentally knocks over the Queen Victoria statue in the pub, Peggy's beau, Frank of the Horrible Jumpers and Gleaming Dentures, consoles her - "it's just a bust", before wobbling all over the place at his gaffe - clumsy symbolism, or a rare moment of humour in EastEnders?
And if it's a health clinic in EastEnders, Rita in Coronation Street has turned her place into a refuge for women in bits after some heel or other has been a rotter again. First there was Sally fleeing the violent knicker king Greg Kelly; now Rita's long-lost foster daughter is crying on her shoulder after the requisite altar drama at the wedding of the week. Did the Corrie tale-twisters think that the Jon Lindsay plotline (where Deardree, the gullible, long-necked one, was strung along by a charmer leading a double life) was so successful that they'd try it again? So we had a second-team replay where lyin', cheatin' Ian strings his fiancee, Sharon along right up the aisle, while simultaneously keeping Natalie sweet at t'Rovers, till his cover was finally blown.
And in the sick world stakes, violent murders have been happening all over the shop. The Spandau Ballet man in EastEnders is too cool altogether about having bumped off his ex-girlfriend, though it was not altogether clear why he panicked after killing her in self-defence and bundled her into a black sack. Still, it'll make for a few twists in the plot over the coming while.
At least there is an investigation of sorts going on in Albert Square. Over in Glenroe, the decidedly suspicious death of Oliver O'Driscoll seems to have barely been noticed by the authorities. Sadly, rural murder is a fact of life these days, and arguments over land are as old as the very hills they are about.
But where was the State pathologist after the body was found? Where is the team of detectives investigating the murder? Why isn't there an Interpol search for the shady brother, Ray, who clearly did a runner? Nessa, the dead man's girlfriend, is the only one who thinks things don't add up, and everyone else just ignores it. And when Nessa went to the sleepy local garda about her suspicions, he more or less told her - in between dealing with traffic violations and eating his sandwiches, no doubt - to go on out of that . . . The emergence of Oliver's black, American ex-wife may be another unrealistic twist, but certainly spices things up.
Over in Brookside, where the storylines have always resembled a problem page, the Irish family the Musgroves are a problem household all of their own. Every member of the family seems to have had a major mishap (and an upbringing so dysfunctional that each has a different accents). Being Irish, the father is naturally a raving alcoholic who has lost his driving licence (awkward, as he's a taxi-driver) and tried to burn the house down. Screechy-voiced Mother is spearheading the current campaign of the soap, having disclosed that she is illiterate. Kelly, the only daughter of the family (that we know of, so far) was embroiled in an escapade with Tinhead, involving the spiking of drink.
There are so many lanky, unkempt sons that it's hard to keep tabs on who's who: Luke has just turned 21 in the clink, arrested for drugging and raping Nikki Shadwick (how is it that Brookside manages to take on so many causes in a cack-handed way that they can make the aftermath of a drug-rape almost farcical?); a younger son, Matt, seems to have caused all sorts of disasters (including the family's homelessness) because of growing weed in unlikely places; and another one, Ryan, is clearly a nasty piece of work (and we reckon he's really the rapist). Well, that's the Irish for ye.
In Fair City, the Important Issue has been the portrayal of a man in the last stages of AIDS-related illness, culminating this week with the "mercy killing" or assisted suicide of Simon. After some difficult scenes and much weeping and gnashing of teeth, Eoghan (Simon's lover Andrew's lover; yes, it's complicated) gave him the pills he begged for and left him to do the deed alone. Death from a terminal illness is food for high drama in a soap opera, even when, as in this case, the viewers hadn't developed a relationship with the character before the illness.
And although Simon was shown as a headstrong individual who refused help and did things his own way, you wonder how realistic it was to portray such pain, in addition to the blindness and the mental deterioration. Modern medical practice, for the most part, practises pain management to allow some dignity - where was the hospice care or a GP who took a proper role in this man's life and death?
"He was so funny, so colourful," comments his Andrew to Eoghan. And indeed Simon was acerbic and caustically humorous. You just wondered what he saw in dull-as-ditchwater Andrew.
There was no real guidance for Eoghan when he looked for it from Mister Malachy, the spoiled priest. And Malachy seems to be proving that once a priest, used to acting alone without consultation, always a priest. He's been blabbing about his fertility problems to a social worker mate, who then cajoles him into taking home a stray youngster to foster. He arrives home to the pub with him, without a word to his wife Kay. "What are you getting worked up about?" he asks her. "You go out for half an hour," says she, "and you come back with a juvenile delinquent." Indeed. Maybe the boy was a planned child.
