[DJ Dave]

Yes, that bedroom is where Little Jimmy was beaten to death by drug dealers in 1996, it was a delightful show!

Plus where Trevor spent his final few days.

[James2001]

I remember on the old TV Ark forums around 2001/2-ish, someone claimed that Brookside had some sequences shot on film in the early days. Though from all the clips I've seen from the show, I've never seen any, not even on scenes shot away from the close in the show's early days. I guess it's possible, filmed location work was still common at the time (and for years afterwards) so there could have been reasons they'd have to use film on some occastions, but I've never seen any evidence of it. Even the non-UK location work from the early days I've seen is on video (when EastEnders had to use film for their Venice shooting in 86). Something else I guess we'll find out watching these repeats.

[James2001]

The STV player have just uploaded a new promo:

player.stv.tv 

Untitled

  Source: player.stv.tv

Has some clips from the early episodes of the show, but uses the 1990-2002 version of the them tune for some reason.

There's another clip on there too, that annoyingly seems to only be watchable in Scotland (looks from the tumbnail like it's a segment from Loose Women about Brookside being streamed, so presumably it's treated the same way as other ITV content on there).

[gottago]

The STV player have just uploaded a new promo:

player.stv.tv 

Has some clips from the early episodes of the show, but uses the 1990-2002 version of the them tune for some reason.

There's another clip on there too, that annoyingly seems to only be watchable in Scotland (looks from the tumbnail like it's a segment from Loose Women about Brookside being streamed, so presumably it's treated the same way as other ITV content on there).

Just change your postcode to any Scottish one (aside from the Border area) to watch it.

[James2001]

I'm hoping the Mersey TV endcap (with stylised Brookside logo) gets left in and not cut out or replaced with a modern Lime Pictures/All3Media one. Far too often these things get replaced, especially when a company's gone defunct, changed names or been absorbed by someone else.

Interestingly, said endcap didn't change for nearly 17 years, bar the changing year (and the year becoming roman numerals in 1996)- keeping the same colour scheme the credits stopped using after the first year. I don't think Mersey TV had a proper logo, or at least not one that was used on screen, until the very end of Brookside's run (that looked like it said "MTV Mersey"). And then not long after they were snapped up by All3 and became Lime Pictures.

A quick look on Youtube and it doesn't look like Hollyoaks used said Mersey TV logo, they kept with their own stylised Hollyoaks logo until the Lime Pictures rebrand in 2006. Also, the Hollyoaks omnibus (including the E4 repeats) kept using generic T4 credits for years after generic credits had vanished from everything else on T4- I think they may have been the only show to use credits with the later T4 looks.

[Si-Co]

Interestingly in the early days Brookside was credited as Brookside Productions rather than Mersey TV in the TV Times.

[James2001]

This high quality version of the elaboarate Brookside logo does actually identify it as "A mersey television company", which seems strange in itself. I wonder if that has something to do with the "Brookside productions" listing:



The same logo also appeared on 80s VHS releases (with the "a mersey television company" tagline), and at this quality you can make out the Liverpool landmarks that are part of the logo too, which you can't make out easily on the endcap. The logo on the endcap is slightly different (mostly the font), though it stayed the same until 1999




The Hollyoaks logo that appeared at the end until 2006 also had the "A Mersey Television company" tagline.

Also noticed that a similar "MTV" logo to that that was used on the last year of Brookside appears in the 1987 and 1988 Brookside spin-offs Damon & Debbie and South (the latter of which rather bizzarely went out as part of ITV Schools), although that version looks like it's meant to be a stylised Liverpool skyline, the M being the Liver Building, I think the T is means to be St. John's Beacon, not sure about the V though, but it has what looks like a crown on it- maybe the Metropolitan cathedral?. The 2002 version doesn't have that.

[tmf9]

I vaguely remember Mersey's "MTV" logo was subject to a dispute and eventually passed to Viacom who still own it today.

trademarks.ipo.gov.uk 

Search for a trade mark - Intellectual Property Office
Skip to main content Intellectual Property Office New search Trade mark number U…
  Source: trademarks.ipo.gov.uk

[James2001]

When you have that "Thames in assosiation with MTV" endcap, with no mention of what MTV stands for, you can understand why MTV/Viacom themselves could have got annoyed, maybe that's why the later logo has "mersey" afterwards.

The endcap used on Damon and Debbie does at least say Mersey TV in addition to the logo. Not sure if the logo was ever used on anything other than those two Brookside spin-offs... did Mersey make anything non-Brookside or Hollyoaks related before the 00s?

Considering all this, Mersey... or more accurately Lime Pictures as they were by then, have since gone on to make programmes for MTV.

[James2001]

Interesting that apparently Brookside didn't start using commercial music until the end of 1999, unlike the other soaps. Means we sadly won't get to hear the characters humming along to all those 80s hits like we've seen elsewhere, we'll just presumably get dodgy musak.