Review: Murder, arson and infidelity in next week's leading soaps

A launderette lady is murdered, husbands and wives are doing what they should with people they shouldn't, and the village villain finds no good deed goes unpunished.

[For those not in the UK, be advised that if you read on you may find something that will spoil your future enjoyment suspense-wise]. The murder of launderette lady Heather Trott by teenage dirtbag Ben Mitchell happens, at last, in EastEnders. The dastardly deed is scheduled for Monday. It had been promised earlier, but you can't believe every spoiler or alert you read about Britain's soaps, especially when someone may have been leaking information in order to make a dollar or two with William Hill. Then there is the little matter of alternative endings. In Coronation Street, the hunt for the murderer of Frank Foster continues, in spite of the local bookmaker confessing to the crime when a cast iron alibi appears out of nowhere, and it looks like an evening in the casino ends with a night in bed, or perhaps with bodies internmingling in the back seat of somebody's car as the husband of the manageress of the local boozer and the wife of the local corner shop owner decide there are more interesting things in life than pulling pints and flogging groceries. Also in Coronation Street, the headmaster of the local school has decided he is also a dietician, or maybe he has just fallen for all that so-called healthy eating pollaver by banning his charges from eating such things as Cornish pasties. It looks like he could be heading for a punch up the bracket from one feisty young mother, who objects to him dictating to her how she can feed her son. Finally, over in Emmerdale, Cain is wearing his good guy hat again. Awhile ago he kidnapped the local upper class rogue and forced him to confess to fitting up a hapless mechanic for murder. Now, still on crutches after being beaten half to death, he rushes local smackhead Holly Daydream to A&E after finding her lying on the ground more dead than alive, and for his pains is about to have his garage torched, with him inside it. If all that sounds rather far fetched, in the real world the brother of Gemma McCluskie has now been charged with her murder. Miss McCluskie appeared in several episodes of EastEnders in 2000-2001. Earlier this month, her torso was fished out of the Regent's Park Canal. Apparently her head has yet to be found. Stranger than fiction, and of course infinitely sadder.