Crossroads

We've all criticized Crossroads at times. We've all commented on the wooden sets, the intentionally bad acting and the lack of guests at Crossroads Motel. However, it was addictive in some way and was on air from 1964-1988.

Meg Richardson was in charge of the Crossroads Motel for awhile. That woman had one long bad life and everyone else in the show did as well. It seemed odd that people could live such eventful lives but that is soap for you.

One of the shows favourite characters was Benny Hawkins played by Paul Henry. Benny was the motel idiot but we liked him all the same. He was an odd character with his woolly hat but even odder, he once went AWOL from the show for several months without any explanation. The actor who played Benny opened up a pub in Birmingham. I last visited it in 1994 but I'm not sure if it is still there.

There were some rather odd stories on the show which perhaps ensured it's enduring popularity. Bizarre is the only word to describe some of the plots at times but hey, it was a lot better than Brookside ever was.

All in all, Crossroads will always have a place in my heart even if it was never clear whether it was a soap or comedy. It made a comeback in the 21st century but I haven't watched the new show. I don't have the time or inclination (at least currently) to watch the new version but I am sure nothing could ever compare to the original.

I wonder if, in the pilot episode of the new version, they still said, "Crossroads Motel, may I help you?"

The very first producer of this Brummie based soap opera was a gentleman called Reg Watson . This name may not be recognisable but it will ring a bell at the back of your mind and when I say he moved to Australia and created a show called PRISONER CELL BLOCK H you'll know who he is now . And like PRISONER this soap based at a Midlands motel was total turd , but often highly entertaining . In fact both myself and many of my peer group would discuss the previous night's episode at school

Every episode starts on a cliff hanger opening : " What you mean you're having my husbands baby " . The actors freeze , but it not a freeze frame camera shot as you can clearly see the actors tremble in fright at their dialogue . The caption CROSSROADS flashes up and Tony Hatch's guitar theme tune blasts in - Ding Ding Ding - Ding Ding Ding Ding . Then the actors get back to what they were doing before . Very bizarre and there's another idiosyncratic revealing mistake in almost every scene and that's the actors waiting for their cue . When the action cuts from one location to another you can clearly see for a brief moment the actor standing still like a statue then they go on to pour a cup of tea or make a phone call etc

But it was the script and characters that made the show entertaining garbage . Shugie McPhee was a master chef and head of the kitchen and in one subplot tried to bring down the motel by contaminating guests food . In one memorable scene a big plastic spider finds itself becoming dessert . And there was Adam Chance who was Ken Barlow's only rival in British Soapland's least convincing hetrosexual character

For me and many others the real star was Benny the retarded oddjob man at the motel . If Channel 4 did a programme called 100 GREATEST RETARDED CHARACTERS IN TELEVISION Benny would win by a mile and unsurprisingly the more ridiculous plots revolved around him . Benny is maimed trying to stop a couple of joy riders , Benny is left 25,000 pound in a relatives will , and Benny is framed for murder . Don't worry he was innocent , it turned out the manager of the garage killed his lover , heard someone walk in and hid as Benny found the body then gasped " My god Benny what have you done ? " . Benny was something of a national institution and no amateur talent contest of the late 1970s was complete without an impressionist trying - And failing - to capture Benny's mannerism

I stopped watching it in the early 1980s and I heard that the producers at the time tried to make it a serious drama which caused the viewing figures to drop and led to its ultimate cancellation .

For about 25 years, this was British TV's best loved bad soap. Shaky sets, some over the top storylines and a host of okay actors revelling in the whole affair.

Set in a fictitious Midlands town, it centres on the staff and guests at the eponymous Motel - in the early days run by Meg Mortimer (Noelle Gordon) and later by Nicola Freeman (Gabrielle Drake).

The best characters included irascible Scots chef Shughie McFee (from The Great Escape); David Hunter (Ronald Allen from a Night to Remember) and Hammer veteran Sandor Eles (Countess Dracula) as a cliched chef.

Look out too for the late Jeremy Sinden (Donald's son) who went on to play one of the ill-fated pilots in Star Wars - a little movie he shot inbetween breaks from Crossroads.

However, head and shoulders above them all was scruffy, backward, lovable Benny Hawkins who never had much luck - his gypsy girlfriend was knocked down and killed on his wedding day - but with his woolly hat and good heart, he was the Midlands version of Forrest Gump long before Tom Hanks cornered the market in loveable simpletons.

The whole thing was repackaged and revamped as Neighbours, a show also boasting a Tony Hatch theme tune. At one point in the late Seventies, Paul McCartney and Wings even provided a rockier theme tune for this Seventies slice of nonsense, nicely spoofed as Acorn Antiques in Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV.

The previous reviewer is quite right. Crossroads was of the "so bad, it's good" ilk. Still, during its peak it had its followers including the (then) prime minister's wife, Mrs. Mary Wilson, a staunch follower. Crossroads suffered from a hectic schedule, originally five days a week. No time for retakes, so it was not uncommon to see a camera crew whizzing by in the background, or to witness an overhanging microphone at the top of the TV screen. Fluffed lines guaranteed in every episode. In its favor, it did not bring dead and buried characters back to life, or have five different actors play the same character (as is common in US soaps). Aside from those mentioned, there were many other memorable characters such as the mousy postmistress Miss Tatum (Elisabeth Croft), the "tart with a heart" hairdresser Vera Downend (Zeph Gladstone), and the kitchen gossip Amy Turtle (Ann George, who deserved an award for worst actress).

Looking back years later, and having spent ten years in the States, I can only compare Crossroads star Noele Gordon to Susan Lucci, the queen of US soaps. Gordon was hardly the glamorous star that Lucci is, but she was undoubtedly THE queen of the UK soap. When she was unceremoniously dumped from Crossroads in 1981, there was a public outcry, and the soap's fate was sealed (as was Gordon's who never quite got over her dismissal and died four years later). Crossroads was given an overhaul and plodded on for a few more years. In the last episode, Jane Rossington (Gordon's screen daughter who spoke the first lines in 1964) drove off into the distance (sunset unavailable) and it was the end of an era. Crossroads and Coronation Street often replaced each other at No. 1 in the charts, just as Coronation Street and Eastenders do these day. That's how good/bad it was.

I was never a fan. Despite the factory production-line acting and writing it gave simple pleasure to millions and that's surely a good thing.

Reviewers then as now enjoy indirectly mocking the masses for their lack of taste by mocking what the masses enjoy.