Brookside - Most Memorable Moments (30th Anniversary Edition) [DVD]

It's so good to see brookside and channel 4 do something for the show that did so much for them after all this time but we need more with some more good Storylines like

brookside sheila and billy kiss on New Year's Eve

Millennium Club exploded

Who killed Susannah

Mick and Elaine help put Gladys out of her misery

Rachel and Christian, Rachel realises to late she has married a violent possesive man

Damon being stabbed to death.

And so much more but still grate to see it and the DVD is amazing

This long awaited DVD release features 16 full episodes of the classic, groundbreaking, Channel 4 soap which ran from 1982-2003 when it was axed after falling viewing figures (mainly due to being pushed around the schedules for Big Brother during 2000-2002).

Before each episode Dean Sullivan (Jimmy Corkhill) gives an overview of the episode which helps to tie up any parts of the storylines featured that aren't shown on screen. For instance he explains, before one of the Jordache episodes, what happened to Beth and Mandy. This stops you wondering too much about what happened next.

Overall the episodes chosen are a decent glance at each period of Brookside's history from the first episode in 1982 upto the final primetime episode from 2002. Obviously not everyone's favourite storylines will be featured, but you can't fit 21 Years of soap onto a DVD.

The Jordache episodes stand out a mile,as do most of them. My least favourite episode was the siege episode from the 1980's, it seemed a bit flat to me, but maybe because I hadn't seen it in the past. The first episode is still very watchable.

Watching it, I realised how much I had forgotten and how much I used to love Brookside. A nice little touch is the inclusion of the original advert break titles (Part One/ Part Two).

The 1998 gas explosion episodes are excellent and I am pleased they are included, also brilliant is the murder of Imelda Clough from 2002 which won Best Storyline at the Soap Awards, along with an acting award for Ray Quinn, almost Brookside's last hurrah.

I've seen reviews of this from before it was even released panning the fact that some storylines have only one episode, but as I explained, this isn't a problem as the overview wraps most loose ends up for the viewers.

Brookside was one of the best soaps and almost certainly the most daring, the ones that it left behind are constantly copying it today. Channel 4 should have released this years ago, let's hope they release more episodes in the future.

Long Live Brookside!

I think they got the balance just right with episodes spanning the 80s to 2002. I admit I lost interest in Brookside after about 2000 when the storylines started getting silly, especially Tim & Emily (yawn) and Lyndsey turning into a psycho gangsta and then her mum having an affair with her girlfriend! But even after 2000 there were still a couple of classic storylines like Anthony killing the bully, which is on this DVD.

Some fans obviously want more of the 80s episodes, and while I agree Brookside was groundbreaking back then, I think for most people the 90s were actually the soap's heyday. You had the Jordaches, Max Farnham's endless wife swapping, Jimmy Corkhill and Little Jimmy on drugs, and Nat and Georgia's incestuous relationship were all absolute classics, and they're all included, so I'm a happy camper!

I just hope they'll release more episodes, or at least put some up on iTunes / 4OD.