TV Cream

TV: C is for...

Crossroads


“ROMANCE WAS IN THE AIR at King’s Oak. The new postman, Vince Parker, had a bright smile and a fast line of chat which appealed to Diane; Peter Hope, the new vicar, was very dishy…but was he too good for working-class Marilyn? Then there was old Enoch, who won £250 on the Premium Bonds and advertised for a wife… But something else was in the breeze. Who were the Poison Pen Letter Writer, the Houseboat Haunter, and the Night Prowler? Was there a Crossroads Crime Wave? Laughter and tears, triumph and heartbreak, love and hatred – every human emotion is here in the special Crossroads blend.”

10 Comments

10 Comments

  1. Des Elmes

    September 1, 2010 at 10:39 pm

    The Carlton revival in 2001 came as something of a surprise – and somehow succeeded in being worse than the original.

    If they intended for the storylines to remain silly and the acting to remain wooden, then they actually overdid it. Plus too many of the characters were young and camp – and the new four-star hotel was almost disturbingly slick compared to the shabby, wobbly motel. The two re-recordings of Tony Hatch’s excellent theme tune didn’t quite cut the mustard, either.

    Not even bringing back several characters from the original series and throwing in the likes of Les Dennis and Lionel Blair could improve things.

  2. Richardpd

    July 29, 2023 at 12:28 pm

    Just to confuse things ITV also screened another daytime Night and Day around the same time, which also flopped in the ratings.

  3. Glenn Aylett

    July 30, 2023 at 10:40 am

    Night And Day starred Lesley Joseph and was a bit like Hollyoaks, with a good looking young cast, but viewers saw it as one soap too many and it ended up in a late night slot before being cancelled. It did seem ITV struggled once they lost Home And Away to find a replacement: Crossroads Mark 2 bombed, then there were repeats of You’ve Been Framed, Paul O Grady ( who defected to Channel 4 in 2006), Goldenballs, and finally The Chase, which while it seems like it’s never been off for the last 14 years, at least has a steady audience and isn’t going anywhere soon.

    • David Smith

      July 30, 2023 at 6:24 pm

      They probably blew the budget on getting Kylie of a people to sing the feem toon.

  4. Richardpd

    December 29, 2023 at 1:14 pm

    Even the later years without Noele Gordon the series seemed to struggle, even with the later updating of the titles & a new version of the theme that sounded like the All Creatures Great & Small theme. Not sure if the guitar version by Wings was kept to dramatic endings.

    Unsurprisingly Victoria Wood gave the later instalments of Acorn Antiques similar titles.

    • Glenn Aylett

      December 29, 2023 at 8:35 pm

      Yes there was the Macca rock version that sometimes appeared and which Paul Mc Cartney did for a bit of a laugh, but the standard theme tune was quite good and memorable to most people over 55( I’m 56 now).
      I think Crossroads became old fashioned and unattractive to younger viewers in the eighties. You had the glamour of the American soaps, the gritty realism and location filming of Brookside, and then you had a very chealy made studio bound soap like Crossroads. Audience figures were steadily falling after 1981 and Central decided Crossroads should be axed after a revamp did nothing to halt the decline.

  5. Sidney Balmoral James

    December 29, 2023 at 8:27 pm

    This remains something of a curate’s egg of a programme, as for most of its existence, it was regarded as a normal soap opera but now is regarded as some sort of camp / cardboard extravaganza, beloved for being terrible, which wasn’t the case in its heyday.

  6. Richardpd

    December 29, 2023 at 10:09 pm

    It’s telling that Emmerdale Farm began to be networked in 1988 & evolve from being The Archers In Vision.

  7. Glenn Aylett

    December 30, 2023 at 11:08 am

    I think Emmerdale Farm was always networked in the eighties, usually at 7pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and opposite Eastenders during the first six months of Eastenders. Emmerdale Farm was, like Richardpd says, like the Archers in vision, with a farm and mooing things being a big part of the story, and not exactly the soap it became when Farm was taken off the title. I do remember one time Doctor Who actor and part time jockey, Fraser Hines, being an important cast member.

  8. Richardpd

    December 30, 2023 at 2:00 pm

    I think some regions were still showing Emmerdale Farm earlier in the day until 1988.

    One big change in the early 1990s was the Farm house used as a location changed hands & the new owners didn’t want the disruption, so the storyline was written to introduce subsidence causing the house to be uninhabitable.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To Top