Festive Names

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 404748" data-attributes="member: 22">This reminded me of the moment a few earlier when Petra and Barry "just happened" to see Roger and Diane McAllister together while they were out and about. Of course, this the kind of thing that occurs all the time in a regular soap, but because the characters in Brookside live in a version of the real world as opposed to a self-contained one, it paradoxically feels extra soapy when it happens here.One of my least favourite things in a soap (and Enders is especially guilty of this on occasion) is scenes involving a couple of central characters surrounded by a bunch of extras all acting "spontaneously", i.e., like a herd of mute sheep.  It just sucks the energy of the whole thing. A party where almost none of the guests have a speaking part should be a prime example of this, but Brookside totally get away with it here by presenting a series of beautifully observed, almost-but-not-quite frozen tableaus of drunken teenage carnage and its aftermath for Billy and Doreen (not to mention poor little Tracey) to react to.  (To my mind, this was a far better deployment of extras than the tiresomely comedic subplot a few episodes later involving Harry, Ralph, a disability badge and a mute traffic warden, which was like something Benny Hill might have done about ten years earlier.)You can't imagine Bobby and Sheila letting Damon have an eighteenth birthday party in a million years. It's funny: outside of the family home, Damon has always been the far more confident of the two teenage boys -- the cocky leader of the gang, while Rod  just made moon-eyes at Heather -- but behind closed doors, their personas are almost reversed. Damon is the family appointed tea-maker, repeatedly reminded of his place in the pecking order by the rest of them, while Rod answers back and is quite cheeky to his parents, especially Doreen. Perhaps it's significant that there seems to be less of an age gap between the Corkhills and their kids than there is between the Grants and theirs (Barry excepted).I just watched a similar scenario to Rod's party in EastEnders in Jan 1991. Here it's Diane Butcher's 17th birthday do, and the concerns are the same: should Frank and Pat stay upstairs just in case things get out of hand and risk cramping the birthday girl's style or go out and leave her and brother Ricky to it? The outcome's not dissimilar to Brookie's, only the kids manage to conceal most of the mess from the grownups. There's some funny stuff at the party (Ricky drunkenly trying to find common ground with Diane's art school friends is probably the highlight), even if it lacks the authenticity of Rod's do. This being a more conventional soap, there's more emphasis on developing ongoing storylines involving the party guests than in presenting a totally realistic slice of teenage life.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?