[James2001]

Didn't the Farnhams live in Number 7? The house that's current unoccupied on the STV epiodes, but Harry and Edna Cross will be moving into soon.

[WillPS]

Didn't the Farnhams live in Number 7? The house that's current unoccupied on the STV epiodes, but Harry and Edna Cross will be moving into soon.

Aye I must be mistaken in that case.

[James2001]

There was more going on in episode 43 than there were in the episodes leading up to it. I think all the main characters appeared apart from Damon, Karen and Alan (and I don't think he'd technically moved in yet anyway).

[James2001]

Clearly they only seem to have the same library or 4 or 5 songs that characters are listening to that keep being played repeatedly.

Seems strange that we've seen Roger's parents appearing in episodes without Roger himself as well.

[chrisdafur]

I heard they owned a fair few houses and some where flats that he would rent out to the cast etc/ or they could stay in while filming.

I did read that Brookside owned "13 houses"- though that would depend on the definition of house, whether they classed the semis and triples as one house or two/three. Considering that bloke is shouting from one of the off-close houses, that would suggest the former, which means they probably owned around half of the houses that weren't on the close itself!

I wonder if they moved some facilities away from the houses when they opened all the stuff in Childwall? Probably little need to have things like the post production, accounting, admin etc. actually on the close once they had those facilities.

I've looked at Google Maps, some photos of the houses and I think these are the original 13 houses they purchased.



From this Back Stage Tour video is looks like 1-3 were used as the Gallery, Wardrobe & Makeup. No 4 was the Canteen. 5-10 are the houses used on screen. From the Open Air video that James2001 first posted it looked like 11-13 are Reception & the Admin offices, although Phil seems to overlook number 11. The point I've marked as A seems to be where the Finance office portakabin was. B is where the security building would have been.  

This Transdiffusion article seems to suggest they purchased a further seven houses immediate area in later years. I'm guessing one of these may have be house C as Phil seems to be talking to someone in the window of this house at the start of the Open Air Video.

Whatever happened to Brookside Close? - Studios - Transdiffusion Broadcasting Sy…
Roddy Buxton explores the Brookside set
  Source: transdiffusion.org

Although the Back Stage Tour video is pretty long it does some interesting insights about how the houses are wired up and some of the tricks they used on screen. They cover the Parade and and how it was originally a science block and some of the additional indoor sets at Childwall.

[Brekkie]

It's amazing really they were able to afford that as a start up soap on a start up channel, and I'm guessing a start up production company too.

[chrisdafur]

It's amazing really they were able to afford that as a start up soap on a start up channel, and I'm guessing a start up production company too.

I guess it was a wise move on their part, if it had been a failure the houses could have been sold for residential use, which I guess they finally were 20 years later. 

Judging by some of the videos of the Close from 2007/9 it looks like they kept hold of all the original 13 houses until the very end. If they sold off any early, it would have been the ones they bought later on.

[James2001]

Would have been hard for them to sell the houses that were actually on the close while the houses were still being used for filming, can you imagine the nightmare that would have been?

It's a shame Google streetview doesn't go onto the close itself, only as far as the security barrier used to be (and was still there if you go back to the ones taken in 2008 and 2009)

[James2001]

In episode 46, Ducksie said he'd like a speedboat, and I thought maybe he should have gone on Bullseye Though I don't think the speedboat had become a cliche until several years after 1983, we'd only had 2 series of Bullseye at this point.

Though in the mid-90s we had Eddie Banks regularly reminding people that he once won a speedboat on there! I seem to remember his video of it getting chewed up when it was showing it off to people.

[Brekkie]

About half way through this weeks batch now and not finding them as engaging as those released previously. Guess there has always been a bit of a hook in the previous batches released but so far this week it's just laying paving stones and the Karen trying to get out of going to church story again. Alan Partridge the first character I don't really find watchable too.