Crossroads (soap Opera) - Characters and Storylines

Characters and Storylines

The original premise of Crossroads was based around two feuding sisters Kitty Jarvis (Beryl Johnstone) and Meg Richardson (Noele Gordon). Meg was a wealthy woman who, with the help of her late husband Charles's insurance money and compensation money from the council for them building a motorway through their land, turned her large Georgian house into a motel. "The Crossroads Motel" was located on the outskirts of the small village of Kings Oak, which was on the outskirts of Birmingham. With Charles, Meg had 2 children. The elder was a girl named Jill (born 1946) followed by Alexander (known as Sandy) in 1950. Kitty, on the other hand, was married to the unemployed Dick and was not wealthy. Dick and Kitty bought a newsagents and tobacconists shop in the nearby town of Heathbury a few years after the show started. Kitty and Dick had a son called Brian, born in 1945. The idea of the sisters 'feuding' was soon dropped.

The show had several characters in its early years. They included Meg and Kitty's brother, Andy Fraser, who became engaged and later married to motel secretary Ruth Bailey in 1965. Hotel chef Carlos Raphael and his wife Josefina who was a waitress along with Marilyn Gates. Kitchen assistant Amy Turtle, later briefly arrested as a suspected Soviet spy, joined the series in 1965 as did postmistress Miss Edith Tatum. Also featured was motel handyman and groundsman Philip Winter. Long running character Diane Lawton arrived in 1966. Other additions included Megs close friend, former actress, Tish Hope; the suave manager and later motel director David Hunter; his first wife Rosemary and son Chris and his second wife Barbara; Chefs Mr. Lovejoy, Mr. Booth and Shughie McFee; hairdresser Vera Downend; accountant and later motel manager Adam Chance; and cleaner Doris Luke. However, the most memorable character proved to be the 'village idiot' Benny Hawkins, whose trademark was a woolly hat worn all year round. His fans included British troops serving in the Falklands War in 1982, who nicknamed the Falkland Islanders Bennies after the character. Instructed to stop using the name, the troops came up with "Stills" for locals - because they were "still Bennies".

Over the years the series dealt with storylines controversial for the times. A single parent working at the motel seems staid now, but was hugely controversial in the mid-1960s; Sandy Richardson was injured in a car accident in 1972 and need to use a wheelchair, the first paraplegic regular character in British soap opera; by coincidence actor Roger Tonge himself later ended up in a wheelchair. The series also saw black characters appearing regularly - a follow-on from the 1960s BBC soap Compact, also created by Hazel Adair and Peter Ling. Melanie Harper (played by Cleo Sylvestre) arrived at the motel in 1970 as Meg's foster daughter (itself a taboo issue). Cleo was given the role by producer Reg Watson after press coverage of racial tensions in the Birmingham area at that time. In 1978, garage mechanic Joe MacDonald (played by Carl Andrews) arrived. The year before, an inter-racial summer romance took place between Cockney garage mechanic, Dennis Harper (played by Merlin Ward, but credited as Guy Ward), and motel receptionist Meena Chaudri (Karan David).

1981 saw a highly controversial storyline about a false accusation of rape; a 1983 storyline saw a test tube baby born to Glenda and Kevin Banks (played by Lynette McMorrough and David Moran). The subject of Downs Syndrome was also raised in 1983 with an insight into the life of Nina Weill, a little girl who, as Nina Paget, was befriended by three of the regular Crossroads characters.

Meg - axed in 1981 - was thought to have died in a fire that gutted the motel, but turned up alive aboard the QE2, about to sail to a new life overseas. Newspapers reported that two endings were planned for Meg - Meg would die in the fire, the other ending would have her disappear for a while and turn up on the QE2. Viewers were surprised to see producers had used both. Meg returned briefly in 1983 for a reunion with Jill and Adam on their honeymoon in Venice

New producer Phillip Bowman was planning to bring the character of Meg Mortimer back into the show as a "permanent occasional" - and plans were well advanced when Noele Gordon died in 1985.

With the revival in 2001, changes were made to characters and stories. The returning character of Jill Chance had married the now-dead John Maddingham, but was calling herself Jill Harvey again, the name by which she had been known prior to her marriage to Adam Chance in 1983. References were also made to the Russell family taking over a "failing motel", despite Crossroads having become a hotel in the late 1980s; in the final episode of the original series, the name 'King's Oak Country Hotel' was seen over the entrance doors.

Lack of real links to the past, and the killing of Jill a few months into the new run, turned many fans away. Despite this, the series did pick up a respectable number of viewers to become one of ITV's highest rated daytime shows. Popular characters in the new Crossroads included new owner Kate Russell (Jane Gurnett), supercilious receptionist Virginia Raven (Sherrie Hewson), and womanising deputy manager Jake Booth (Colin Wells).

The storyline of the final episode was the revelation that the revived series and glamorous hotel had been a dream of supermarket worker and original crossroads fan Angela, with all the other characters revealed as shoppers. Angela even approaches a female customer in the supermarket and tells her she recognises her as Tracey (Booth) from the "TV soap the original Crossroads"; Tracey's mother-in-law, Kate, was also shown as one of Angela's colleagues in the supermarket.