Brookie: Die Harder

Brookside explosion 1.mp4



The soap genre returns in some style tonight, as we see one of the more memorable moments from Merseyside soap "Brookside" on Channel 4. Hollywood couldn't have done it better! This is the gas explosion that occurs on Brookside Parade(an extension to Brookside Close since 1993), thanks to Ron Dixon (Vince Earl) trying to keep the pounds in his pocket and trying to fix the gas leak himself. Was he the daft so-and-so? Well, the background story is, Sinbad (Michael Starke), a Brookie favourite, being a suplier of kitchen equipment and such, sold Ron the gas cooker, for his new flat above his shop.

So this a 2-parter of the event, but not a full episode. Watch out for the shock second explosion after all the hysteria burdgen on, near the end of the second part. Only one dies from the gas explosion and that is Candy the dog, of the new family of the Shadwick's. It's a great episode, it features all of the main characters from the time but no Jimmy Corkhill I see, but the rest of his family is there, like daughter Linda (Claire Sweeney), possibly the most hysterical of the bunch as the fear of her daughter Kylie still inside the complex. There's your old favourites like Jackie Corkhill (Sue Jenkins), Mick of the pizza parlour fame and Max Farnham, who gets caught in the rubble also with anothe regular. In this period, there were 6 fires and explosions over a 5 year period, unbelieveable for a tiny corner of Liverpool. The soap depended more and more on sensationalism rather than realistic hard-hitting issues in it's final years. This was followed by a bomb detonation in the local nightclub "Millenium Club" (or vice versa, but I think it's in the right order).