Crossroads

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

Only six months into the new re-vamped Crossroads,and rumor is already starting to spread of a potential axing.Well,to be honest,this is not really surprising.As high hopes as anyone might have had for this new edition , it's really just not up to scratch.The main problem being the acting:it is , whatever way you look at it, wooden.Everyone involved simply reads their lines out as blankly and dully as you can imagine,so that they sound almost like cyborgs.The stories are rather cliched and predictable,with love triangles,high stakes and adversity being mainly on the agenda.And it is so hard to believe that all this could be going on under the roof of a hotel.Worth watching,but certainly only as something to glance at while eating your snack.**

That didn't take long did it?? Crossroads returned in something considerably less than a blaze of publicity to ITV1 on 13th January 2003. I was initially quite optimistic about it's chances, hoping that the daily dose of high camp farce, glamour and terrible acting might appeal to the great unwashed that is the British public.

Unfortunately, despite moving at a pace which would blow most other soap scriptwriters out of the water, covering dozens of storylines in a matter of weeks, it seems the show has failed to strike a chord with the considerable UK daytime audience, it's viewing figures sliding to a paltry 1.3 million per day (the 1st revival's lowest point was 2.5 million), barely enough to sustain a show Carlton and ITV spent almost £15 million on bringing back. So, this morning, on March 10th, 2003 it was announced that Crossroads will disappear from the schedules when it's current batch of episodes ends in the summer.... as if that wasn't bad enough, to add insult to injury - the show is being moved out of the 5pm slot in a few weeks to a more 'suitable' early afternoon slot.

To be fair to ITV, the show hasn't been dogged with any rumours of an axing, but also, it barely has had enough time to even register in the public consciousness - so I feel that an axing might well be premature. I know one thing, I'll miss Jane Asher and Jane Gurnett's deliciously awful bitching and catfights (as Angel Samson and Kate Russell respectively). No disrespect to ITV, but they seem to be developing an almost American mentality towards show, if it doesn't perform brilliantly from the start, then they're not interested. If the BBC behaved in a similar fashion, Eastenders would have been cancelled less than 3 months after first airing, instead of running for 18 years....

'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 *****

The New Crossroads is a cracker of a soap to watch. It has inherited all the stigma of the original series but you don't need to have seen that to be able to follow this.

The media is none too happy with this production but then that's their job to pick faults. But if you like this production you'll ignore what they say anyway.

Plotwise is nothing we haven't seen before albeit the inclusion of a gay couple which was groundbreaking for a lunchtime soap. They have now split up and one has moved away, bit of a wasted opportunity really.

The only real trouble is that some storylines will just drag on for weeks and weeks going nowhere storyline wise. Some talent in certain actors/actresses is just totally wasted because they only have minor storylines.

However, brave attempt by Carlton to make the show like it is and it really works, it's good and fun to watch. Constantly hounded by rumours of an axing (mainly from non Crossroads fans it has to be said) which doesn't help.

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'