Authors Electric

1980s me! I was born in 1964, so most of my supposedly formative years were in the 1970s and 1980s. I remember our family having the first colour television on the street – hired from Radio Rentals as were they all back then. I remember having just three TV channels and the excitement of the launch of Channel 4 in 1982. I also remember the launch of Brookside , the new hard-hitting Channel 4 soap set in Liverpool. I’d just started at Liverpool university and if you got up early enough at university, you could watch them filming in the city.  Brookside was supposedly targeting ‘gritty social issues’ – did it? I honestly don’t know. I didn’t watch any other soaps, so I had nothing to compare it with. I had vague memories of the local charming-but-deadly gangster Tommy McArdle, and then of course there was the infamous body under the patio and the first televised lesbian kiss, both of which catapulted actress Anna Friel to fame.  But compared to modern soap, Brookside  is ...

Andy and I are currently binge-watching Netflix. That’s a strange 21 st  century expression –  binge-watching . Watching a series to excess, gorging ourselves, although to be fair, sometimes it’s only an episode a night and we might even a skip a few nights if we are out and about. We’re season 5 now, of apparently 7 seasons and I have no idea where we are going or what might happen. I generally find American and/or digital series boring. Season 1 is OK, but then season 2 is more of the same and it starts to drag as even the writers look like they’ve run out of ideas and lost interest. Plot-lines are regurgitated, strung out for effect until the viewer (well this viewer anyway) doesn’t really care what happens any more, so long as  something  does. It’s a bit like Brexit, really, isn’t it? But this series has the both of us hooked. Every time things settle down, it kicks off in a new direction and we don’t see it coming. There have been several WTF moments,...