The End of the Affair

Five’s only home-grown drama series, Family Affairs, ground to a halt last Friday, leaving Hollyoaks as the only UK soap so low on the radar it can get away with crazy, made-up-on-the-day-of-filming plots and providing inexperienced actors with an off-peak training ground. Where the big three soaps are going to pillage future writing, directing and acting talent from is anyone’s guess.

It’d be fair to say that Family Affairs has been rubbish for the past few months. The show’s latest revamp was a disastrous attempt at becoming a slightly more grown-up Hollyoaks, doing away with all the families and bringing in a host of young faces who unfortunately all looked the same – making it impossible to really be sure what was going on. And to make Charnham a tad more glamorous, all the newcomers had names like Rex, Meredith, Hester or Coral, ie names that no one living in an Acton-inspred neighbourhood would possess.

Which is a shame, because when Family Affairs got it right, it was brilliant. Pete convincing wife Siobhan she’d killed her lover Josh was a truly original storyline, recently ripped off by EastEnders to prop up their rubbish Den Watts murder plot. In fact, anything involving bad guy Pete was a triumph – mainly because the actor and the writers knew who Pete was and never altered him for the sake of a plot. Parachute David Easter into EastEnders now, along with Rosie Rowell (wife Eileen). Those two could kick some life into the dormant sdrama.

Characters were what once made Family Affairs the soap it was, with all the soap archetypes present. Preachy Nicki Warrington – holier than thou, but always willing to shag a neighbour/step-son. Lovely Roy Farmer – a nice guy who was just a tad stupid. Tragic landlady Eileen Callan – all her attempts to make things better involved fake pregnancies and arson attempts. Frequently married Yasmin McHugh, whose husbands have ended up invariably murdered, fleeing the country or being exposed as con artists. And the Hart clan who the show originally centred on may have been boring at times, but they were all genuinely well-drawn and likeable characters. Which is something Hollyoaks is still struggling to find after 10 years on the box.

Anyway, it’s sad Family Affairs ended in such a jumble as the final episode showed there were still a few tricks left in the old. Thankfully Eileen Callan returned – complete with lottery win and non-speaking toyboy extra in tow – making up for the recent erroneous axing of her and soap lynchpin Pete. And young Katie Williams noticed her new boyfriend had been going around killing his ex-wives. Which was brilliant ambiguously handled. Farewell Family Affairs – we’ll kind of miss you. But please Five, commission a new soap to replace it. Reruns of Joey just won’t do.