Crossroads

As a soap-a-holic, I was pleased to hear that "Crossroads" was making a comeback, as I was only three years old when the show was cancelled, and therefore never saw it.

Alas, I was rather dissapointed with what I found. Crossroads Motel had been demolished and replaced with a Crossroads four star hotel. Some of the acting from the new actors is terrible, the script is dier at times, and what seems like the beginning of an ongoing storyline is over by the commerical break.

But perhaps the biggest mistake of all was killing of Jane Rossington as Jill Harvey. Jane was the best of the three original cast members that had returned to the show. The writers killed her off because the ratings weren't high enough.

If that were the case, then surely the most sensible thing to do would have been to pull the plug on the whole show, and not the best character.

I'm not too surprised. Even at the age of 15, I have noticed a severe landslide in the quality of British TV. The overall quality of British soaps has plummetted, making most of British TV cheesy, boring and unrealistic.

Take the conversations held by some of the teens in Crossroads - nobody talks like that!!!!

5 out of 10.

Crossroads dared to be different. Whereas the 2001/2002 series was pretty standard fare the 2003 series was fantastically daft and surreal. Where else would you get character names such as "Angel Samson" and "Valentine Startwood"?

Crossroads was a welcome break from the normality of British soaps. It had glamour, sex, singing and the wonderfully sinister Ethan Black all at tea time. No main character was killed off (the exceptions being three guest stars) and near the end the characters were really starting to become developed.

A soap cannot be judged on 8 weeks like Crossroads was. People say that the 2003 series was it's final chance but it was a totally different kettle of fish to the old Crossroads and shouldn't have been seen as the same.

The ending however was fantastic. There were so many digs at ITV and the cast sent themselves up wonderfully. Oona and Dave as the owners of "Stocks Superstore" is the funniest thing I've seen this year.

Crossroads shall be missed by all that wanted escapism from the monotony of normal soaps.

With the exception of DOCTOR WHO any television show that has its format changed is bound to fail . The original series of CROSSROADS worked because it was total garbage . On its return it's obvious the producers wanted it to be a big success by making it appeal to a teenage audience by sexing it up - Big mistake . Take for example the idea of a Scottish chef in the motel kitchen . In the original it was a Scottish chef who was - Depending on how the writers felt that day - either a wimp or a bitter sociopath . In the new version we're treated to a hunk from Scotland who's a real smoothie and in one episode saves a damsel in distress from a burning derelict church

Despite this spicing up the show I think the only attractive cast member was ( Non ) actress Cindy Marshall-Day who played drunken slapper Tracey Booth and naturally playing that sort of role she got all the best lines like this line she says to one of her Asian staff :

" Beena - Been a round more like "

Being a complete slut Mrs Booth was the catalyst for a domestic subplot where her husband has to explain to her son in a sensitive manner that Mummy and Daddy don't love one another any more :

"I'm thirteen y'know not three " moans the son who's played by a child actor so bad it's impossible to believe he's even had a walk on part in a school pantomime and gives the only performance that comes close to being so bad it's good

This new version of CROSSROADS was met by small viewing figures that just got worse and worse so in order to save it the producers went back to basics and included more and more outlandish plots in order to make it appeal to fans of schlock television . We saw Adam Chance return as a homicidal maniac but the writing was on the wall and the show was cancelled with the ending being on a par with someone waking up and discovering it had all been a bad dream . The reality was it was more of a bad idea than a bad dream

'Crossroads' disappeared from ITV1 in mid 2002, and we were assured that the show hadn't been axed..... sure enough on the 13th of January, 2003 it returned, sporting a mostly new cast and a new look.

Any attempt at realism has been thrown out the window, as the show's new Producer Yvon Grace has decided to go for glamour over realism. I have to say, it's so awful that it's actually unmissable - it's almost American in it's sheer awfulness. The new cast are uniformly hopeless, and it's only the old hands from the 2001 revival that seem to know what they're supposed to be doing. Jane Asher is simply terrible as Angel Samson, Emma Noble (the daughter in law of the former British PM John Major) is even worse. She had one line in the first episode of the new run, and couldn't even make 'Good morning' sound convincing.. Anne Charleson (Madge from 'Neighbours') has been thrown in for good measure, and she's actually quite good.

The story picks up a year after where we last left the show, so I assume that Phil Berry is in the slammer. Anyway, the hotel has changed hands yet again, and been given a horrendous new look more in keeping with Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas than any British hotel I've ever seen. The first episode had all the soap necessities - murder, an astonishing amount of adultery, some of which was mingled with the murder, a party and a twin shagging his twins wife in a train toilet (obviously he found out who she was at the end of the episode). All in all, I'd say that 'Crossroads' now has everything it needs to be a moderate teatime success for ITV1 - sex, glamour, pretty men, pretty women (and no Doris Luke!!!) and it's been moved from 5.30pm to 5.00pm and is no longer going to get hammered in the ratings by 'Neighbours' on BBC1.

I think I'll keep watching as it's simply so awful that it's completely unmissable.... it has the same 'train wreck' effect as American soaps like 'Sunset Beach', 'Days of Our Lives' and 'The Bold and The Beautiful', and is infinitely more interesting than the bland post millenial attempt that was foisted upon us in 2001.

*** out of *****

Dallas's shower scene showed us that we dream in colour, Crossroads' finale told us that Jane Asher dreams at lightspeed: she got through the whole 5 months of the Hotel saga down in a blink.

Using the tried and tested Dallas dream trick, Crossroads bowed out with Angela (Jane Asher) realising her life as vampish hotel owner Angel Samson was a dream. The reality was that she crimped her hair, spoke with a Brummie accent and worked on a supermarket checkout, with former nemesis and sometimes friend Kate Russell as her co-worker.

As gag endings go, St. Elsewhere's was classier and Sledge Hammer's much funnier, but neither could touch this for the number of accents attempted. I actually lost count of how many accents were represented in the supermarket.

Most of the regular characters made appearances in the supermarket. Battleaxe Hotel receptionist Virginia became a battleaxe checkout supervisor married to Security Guard Rocky Wesson. Betty Waddell became a (geographically non-specific) customer in love with Rocky (I ask you!?!?). Thrusting American Businessman Max Samson was transformed into a lager and crisp buying American scruff, while the Samson twins, Ryan and Jimmy, had their roles reversed, with 'sex god' Ryan turned into a total geek, and former geek Jimmy becoming a Cockney sex toy for the Wise sisters (Phil, Lola and Belle). Even camp gay chef Vince underwent a total transformation to a Brummie layabout married to a shell suit wearing Helen Raven.

Perhaps the clumsiest joke was Tracy Boothe, going from booze hound Bar Manager to the alcoholic star of a TV show called, yes, you guessed it..... 'Crossroads'