[WillPS]

To be fair, they were probably right that people probably wouldn't remember a minor character played by the same actor with the same name from several years earlier.

Yep absolutely, the programmes were not designed to be watched the way we are all now watching and we have to offer some extra suspension of disbelief as a result.

I don't know any other soaps well enough to know if this neglect of long term canon is just an accepted thing within the genre.

Some of the later stuff in Brookside really pushes it IMO, stuff happens that makes no sense given stuff which would have happened less than a year before in original broadcast time. More on that when we get to it (hopefully!).