I'm sure the theme tune was wrong. It used to be much better, I'm sure it did. And they never used to film it on film either. Ah well. Cue an hour and three quarters of death, doom and despair. Just like Brookie used to be, then. And still time for one more savage murder, but above the patio this time. Barry Grant came back, which was a nice excuse for a few classy flashbacks of our Sheila and our Damon. Barry returned to ask Jimmy Corkhill for daughter Lindsey's hand in marriage, or maybe it was just to remind us that this soap had had a golden age and that it was long gone.
The residents of Brookside have been particularly miserable of late. That'd be ever since the evil Jack Michaelson, your unfriendly local drug dealer, moved into the Close a few weeks ago, like a narcotic whirlwind. Hey presto, one lost kidney, one toddler on acid, one teenager on crack cocaine and the entire cast ready to pack their bags and leave the close for good, or at least all those who hadn't already left in the back of an ambulance.
Jack Michaelson - the name may be naggingly familiar. That's because producer Phil Redmond has been attempting some rather blunt symbolism here, naming his final villain after Michael Jackson, the controller of Channel 4 at the time of Brookside's final downgrading. Tonight's last episode dripped with symbolism as well as blood. The unfortunate Mr Michaelson met a gruesome end, attacked by an impromptu lynch mob of residents in his own home, trussed up and hung out to die from his bedroom window. And, when the bizzies sped round to the Close one last time, nobody had seen a thing, honest. Dead good that.
As the episode drew to a close, all the remaining families left the Close to start up new lives elsewhere. No doubt we'll see half the actors turning up in Holby City or Emmerdale within a few months. Soon there was only Jimmy Corkhill left, sitting in an old armchair beside a blazing bonfire, surveying a deserted sea of boarded-up houses. In a last feeble act of defiance he went round the Close turning all the taps on, and then he too was off to live a new life of luxury with Barry and Lindsey. "Come on, we've all got lives to get on with." Game over. And, somehow, no great loss.
