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The Best...soap deaths

Martine McCutcheon as Tiffany in EastEnders
  • Posted at 3:30pm
  • 16 July 2008
  • by KateCoffey-RT
  • 3 comments

"Soap death" is a bit of an oxymoron when you think about it. No-one dies in a soap death - they get an upgrade to The Bill or end up on some reality TV show, reinvented as a singer/presenter/ rent-a-celeb. Dead soap characters have even been known to be resurrected in a fleeting attempt to raise ratings, such as EastEnders's comeback king, Den "Hello, princess" Watts.

Anyone who dies twice is worthy of a place in the soap death hall of fame, although in the case of Den Watts's second coming it is difficult to decide which required more of a suspension of disbelief: the fact that he hadn't really died but had been on the run from "the firm" in Spain since 1989, or the way that, on his return, resembling a cadaver in a leather jacket, he proceeded to sleep his way around the Square. Anyway, as we well know, the ladies in question finally came to their senses and hit him over the head before burying him in the cellar of the Queen Vic.

Another deserved soap death for crimes against womanity has to be Brookside's Trevor Jordache, similarly given a concrete burial (under the garden patio) at the hands of his long-suffering wife and daughter. The Liverpudlian soap's allegiance to gritty social issues made EastEnders look like a panto in comparison, and nowhere was this more personified than by wife-beating rapist/ paedophile Trevor.

By the time his reign of terror was brought to a gruesome end, we would happily have seen him hanged, drawn and quartered to boot. Like Dirty Den, Trevor was a baddie who got his comeuppance - which amounts to a great, cathartic soap death. Only Trevor's was that much more believable.

Saying that, soap deaths don't always have to be believable to be great. Having the sinister, murdering conman Richard Hillman in the otherwise innocuous world of Coronation Street was a bit like finding something unpleasant in your box of chocolates. Homicide doesn't generally fit in with Corrie's raison d'être, but in this case, we went along for the ride.

It's fair to say that most people wouldn't have minded if he had murdered simpering wife Gail, but when he chose to attack the national institution that is Emily Bishop, we were all gunning for his demise. And a car chase (even if it was into the Manchester Ship Canal) is always a reliably thrilling end.

In soaps, like all fairy tales, the death of a villain makes for a great story, which is of course its moral core. But it's not always the case: the greatest soap deaths arguably come about when the person who least deserves it dies. Like Tiffany, for instance. As if it wasn't enough that bullying husband Grant Mitchell demanded a paternity test and slept with her mother, he then kidnapped their child and got her run over in the process. Glutton for punishment she may have been, but the twinkle-eyed cockney sparrow was one of EastEnders' all-time favourite tragic heroines, and she arguably had a better death than any of the above villains put together.

Besides, if a soap death is a career upgrade, where are all these villains now? "Tiff" may not have exactly achieved world domination since she left the Square, but she's done better than lounging in typecast obscurity. Who says justice only happens in fairy tales?

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  • Posted on 23 June 2009
  • at 1:57pm
  • by death as it comes

the deaths are not fair take ronnie and danielle from eastenders as soon as she find out that ronnie is danielles mum they kill danielle off they should of given them a little time to get to know eachother and then killd danielle of at least they kill people off to early

  • Posted on 06 January 2009
  • at 5:36pm
  • by Rosie

Eastenders death of den was a one to remember. Not because i liked it though!

  • Posted on 17 July 2008
  • at 2:56pm
  • by Grim Reaper

The deaths in "Neighbours" were fairly memorable too. I remember shedding tears when Gran "died" and went off to the great Bungle Bungles in the sky. Anne Haddy was a great actress and her real demise soon after was a great blow.

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