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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 359091" data-attributes="member: 23">23 May - 2 July 1979 3154 - 3176 So sums up the workings of the latest significant newcomer in Kings Oak: Barbara Brady has arrived.Every character with whom she interacts seems fascinated, suspicious, smitten or some combination of these.Kings Oak’s answer to Richard Chamberlain, Dr Farnham, is practically fighting a duel with David to gain her attention, while Lloyd seems at least as interested in Barbara as he does Meg.Meanwhile, there’s a hint of a background that’s anywhere between mysterious and sinister. Her arrival at Lloyd’s cottage before he’d even sent the letter requesting a housekeeper ensured that those around her started off on the back foot. Then there’s her apparent interest in murders and poisons. All keep the tongues wagging.All signs point to her devious nature with the way she handles conversations in a way that gives nothing away about herself while revealing more about those with whom she’s speaking. I’m still not entirely sure what I’m supposed to make of her.The way I’ve viewed the character has been coloured by the few pieces of information I’ve gleaned about actress Sue Lloyd in recent months: from her being characterised as a bitchy schemer in Nolly to an article in which she spoke about hooking up with Ronnie Allen weekdays before going home to her husband at weekends to that video James posted back on Page 8 where she appears even more frosty and imperious than Russell T. Davies’s writing suggested.This means I probably found myself more critical of her performance than I might otherwise have been. The pouting. The almost porny "presenting" body language. The whimsical delivery - akin to a rather poor am dram performance of Private Lives. It irritated me.Then there’s the air of smug entitlement. More than anyone else, I’m reminded of Tippi Hedren’s character in The Birds who simply appears in a sleepy little place then immediately seems to engineer drama for the sake of it, smirking the whole time.However, a fun conversation between Barbara Brady and the newly-returned Sandy has gone some way towards diffusing my doubts and shifting my perception of the character. This was the conversation with the bonkers reveal that she is secretly.... romantic novelist Eleanor Ruskin. Whether intentional or otherwise (I like to think it is intentional), this explains away a lot of the things that were bothering me, and in turn makes Sue Lloyd’s performance seem significantly more palatable.Have we turned a corner for good? I hope so. Especially since it seems her already significant screen time will only increase.What else has happened? Well, Mac and Trina have married, and Sandy had the Polaroids to prove it.The newly arrived Turveys look set to emigrate to New Zealand before we’ve even got to know them. Meanwhile, Cyril Watkins has shifted his sights from Doris Luke to surgery receptionist (dispensing receptionist, as it turns out) Marian Owen. It’s nice to see a little more of Margaret John, and I’ve enjoyed Cyril and Marian reflecting nostalgically about taking the paddle steamer from Cardiff to Clevedon and Weston-super-Mare.The cause of their nostalgia was Doris Luke going to Weston to convalesce after a fall from a stepladder at the shop in which she punctured her lung (naturally, she wouldn’t hear of remuneration since she considers Cyril a friend). In reality, I suspect she’s not actually on a windy promenade overlooking the Severn Estuary, but scrubbing steps in Holmfirth. As always, I look forward to her return.Sharon is involved in a storyline that’s somewhere between bizarre and sick. After being in a car accident in which the woman driving the other vehicle was killed, Sharon has not only befriended the dead woman's husband, she’s begun to form a tight family unit with him and his daughter (the daughter of the woman killed) who both appear to love her. You’d think even Sharon would draw the line here. It reflects poorly on her character to be moving in on a wealthy and ostensibly vulnerable man before his wife’s body is in the ground.I say he’s “ostensibly vulnerable” because the signs are pointing towards him suspecting his wife of infidelity. He’s just made a threat of hired violence towards Victor Lee for having the sense to be concerned over the romance between him and Sharon, so the rules of soap say he probably had something to do with his wife’s vehicle being involved in the accident in the first place. We’ll see.My favourite dialogue in this batch of episodes came with a throwaway catty line from David Hunter:Meg: “Oh. This one’s sent a photo in answer to our advertisement for the Assistant Manager’s job.”David [looking at the photo]: “He certainly didn’t mistake the advertisement for a beauty contest.”The flat, matter-of-fact delivery and the way he swivelled his chair away as though disinterested immediately after the deadpan put-down made me laugh out loud. It’s also the moment where I suddenly realised that Ronald Allen resembles Ian McKellen at times.Another piece of dialogue which amused me was posh teen Rebecca bemoaning the fact that her father hadn't given her a groovy first name like Sharon's. Incidentally, Rebecca planned to take her "new LP" over to her friends and picked up a pristine gatefold copy of Grease on vinyl. It was enough to make [USER=2]@Ome[/USER] drool.Over in psychic city, I swear Mac started to whistle the EastEnders theme in the garage, half a dozen years before that series began.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?