Little Duckington - a reprise…

So after all those weeks in Little Duckington with all the intrigue, romance, mistaken identity, affairs, even the odd murder, this is where they all end up. In the bathroom in a large glass tube like so many ordinary rubber ducks before them, waiting to be picked up and played with – waiting for the chance to swim and quack, gamble and dance, sing and go off down the pub for a pint or two once more.

Who would have guessed that these are the very same ducks who led such wild and interesting lives for such a short while not so very long ago – Dilly, Dolores, Dilly, Dani, Dennis, Dunny, the Dave’s, Colette and Claudette Canard, even poor Father O’Mallard.

But, that’s the way with soap operas. One moment the whole nation watches or listens, the next they are gone. Brookside, Crossroads, Eldorado, Triangle, Mrs Dale’s Diary, all gone, no longer with us, deceased, almost forgotten in the unstoppable wake of ‘Stenders, Cora, Hollyoaks, Emmerdale (not Emmerdale farm you notice, they don’t farm much in those parts these days - too busy killing and raping), and Doctors (whatever that is).

Oh, sometimes they are revived. Who could forget the short-lived return of Crossroads in 2001? It didn’t really take off, but then what is Crossroads without Miss Dianne, Sandy and his wheelchair, Meg (who seemed to crash planes almost weekly), and the lovelorn, tea-cosy hatted, Benny?

Others, like Triangle, will stay sunk beneath the seas of time for ever hopefully. Just whose idea was it to make a soap opera about a ferry travelling between Felixstowe, Gottenburg, and Amsterdam anyway? Didn’t they realise that the North Sea is a trifle dreary, and the weather often a little more than inclement?

More recently, there was that awful, weird and thankfully short-lived soap Echo Beach. Set in the Cornish Town of Polnarren it fumbled along almost without plot whilst Echo Beach’s’ sister show, Moving Wallpaper, described the trials and tribulations of writing and making Echo Beach. What a silly idea – even Jason Donavan couldn’t save it.

Soap and rubber ducks, they seem to go together so well and who knows one day Father O’Mallard might step out of the shower to find that his murder was nothing more than a dream. Maybe it’s time for the return of Little Duckington, or at least the occasional special episode…

Who knows?