[Brekkie]

At least twice I've seen the Grant's saying something about going to Tesco and I think on one occasion Sheila was carrying a Tesco carrier bag into the house, interesting they didn't go with a fake brand like Coronation Street did with 'Freshco'. I wonder if the fact that there actually was a real Tesco (and still is) just a few minutes from the Close had anything to do with that.

Didn't Freshco come later for Corrie?   I suspect Phil Redmond wanted Brookside to very much exist in the real world so have people shopping at a known supermarket rather than made up brand.

[James2001]

Technically Freshco wasn't until 1998. The original fake supermarket was Bettabuy, but even that didn't appear until Curly started working there in 1989. Then Firman's Freezers (filmed in three different shops, all of which looks nothing alike) after Curly was fired from Bettabuy. I do remember seeing a pre-Bettabuy episode where Curly had a Tesco bag, which angered Alf.

In fact there was a period in the early 70s, as you can see on some of the episodes that came out on DVD, where there was Co-op branded stuff in the corner shop.

[James2001]

Jimmy Savile pops up in a British Rail poster in episode 6, so they're clearly not in any way censoring the episodes.

[James2001]

According to someone on DS, they're going to be putting up 10 more episodes on Wednesday rather than the expected 5 because it's been received so well. That will take us into 1983.

[m_in_m]

How many times a week was Brookside on?

[chrisdafur]

How many times a week was Brookside on?

Two episodes per week until the 90's.

[James2001]

Two a week until mid 1990, three afterwards (bar some special weeks when there were more).

[Si-Co]

I’ve noticed that STV appear to have different edits of these early episodes than those shown on UK Living. On Living, the standard EOP slides/bumpers were used, that we were familiar with seeing on Channel 4, whereas on STV Player the End of Part One/Part Two text is superimposed over the action, sometimes in a different font. The break stings also play over a lot more of the dialogue on STV.

I am guessing that what we are seeing on STV are the original edits, and prior to transmission these were re-edited at the request of either Channel Four or someone at Mersey TV, who preferred the use of break slides. UK Living got the same edits that Channel 4 used, but STV had to go back to the distributor (possibly Lime Pictures) and were given the original edits. At some point on STV we will probably start seeing the slides once we reach the point when production/post-production “got the memo”.

Episode Seven (UK Living) - skip to about 10:55:

youtu.be 

Credit: Brookside - YouTube

Compare with STV Player (stills):

[James2001]

Or maybe UK living edited on the more familiar break captions themselves for whatever reason and what we're seeing on STV player is how they went out on Channel 4 in 1982.

Another thing I've noticed is the strongly varying episode lengths- some are over 26 minutes long, but a couple only run to around 21, that's a lot of variation. I'd expect a minute or two between episodes, but not 5.

[Si-Co]

Or maybe UK living edited on the more familiar break captions themselves for whatever reason and this is how they went out on Channel 4 in 1982.

I don’t think so, because the text and music covers some of the footage that was shown “clean” on the UK Living episodes. In the example above, both Gavin’s final line before the break and his walk-off and the first few lines of Sheila and Karen’s scene after the break had the music and text over them on the STV version. I’m sure that couldn’t be easily re-edited, if at all.