How many murders can there be in one street or in one square? The answer to that question is probably related to how high are the programmes in the ratings, and how low the scriptwriters are prepared to sink. There does though appear to be what might be called a certain cross-fertilisation, especially in the murder department.
In
Coronation Street,
rapist Frank Foster is found murdered in the knicker factory, and his aspiring floozie, daffy housewife Sally Webster, is found with his blood on her hands, although there is no shortage of suspects. Where have we seen this before?
Well, it could be in
Emmerdale where local bad guy Cain was battered nearly to death with an iron bar. The owner of the local sweet factory was found with
blood on his hands, and charged after being identified, but the case was dropped when Cain relented, not wanting to grass up the real culprit, his own father.
Then there was the murder of evil Archie in
EastEnders, where his eldest daughter was found bending over the body with blood on her hands, and was arrested, but released. The police would eventually focus on Bradley Manning, who fell to his death during the chase, when it was then revealed that it was Bradley's sluttish ex-wife who was responsible.
Is that similar or what?
In
EastEnders, Heather Trott is murdered by Ben Mitchell, the little weasel who has recently framed his own father for a murder that never happened. This is an open and shut case, for the viewer if not for the local plod. And in
Emmerdale? Not a lot, for us heterosexuals at any rate; there was a time when this sort of thing wouldn't have been allowed before the watershed, but now they even allow domestic abuse in the daytime soaps, only this time with a twist. In the BBC's
Doctors, a male doctor who is not exactly in the first flush of youth is being abused by the woman he appeared to think was the love of his life. Most members of the not so fair sex would consider this to be taking equal opportunities too far, but in the real world, the Bromley edition of the
News Shopper freesheet reports the jury has been discharged in the murder trial of former bit part
EastEnders actress
Karen Williamson. No reason appears to have been given, but a retrial has been ordered for May 28.
Coronation Street fans are unlikely to have to wait that long to find out who murdered Frank Foster.
