SECRET is a word that doesn’t exist in Soapland. If anyone says to a confidante “Don’t tell a soul” you know that the story will be public knowledge faster than Stephen Fry can Twitter.
Some secrets take longer than others to percolate into the public consciousness and when they do, you’d better take cover as the explosion occurs. When it happens in the Yorkshire farming community of Emmerdale (ITV1), it’s messier than most. Those flying cowpats are dangerous missiles.
Which brings us – not before time, I hear you say – to the Wylde man of Emmerdale. That’s Mark Wylde, lord of the manor and husband of two women.
He married both, making himself extra work as he forgot to divorce Faye Lamb before wedding Natasha. For several months both women have been living in the same village without the other realising they are both Mrs Wylde.
Natasha has had her suspicions while Mark has been eating Lamb hotpot. She decides to catch him by staking out Faye’s cottage. Sure enough, she finds them in each other arms.
Upstairs Maisie, Mark and Natasha’s daughter, is snogging Ryan, Mark and Faye’s son. They are blissfully unaware that they are related and there’s a not-verynice name for what they’re doing.
I know it’s complicated and if you’d like a diagram just send a stamped-addressed envelope.
Mark and Faye are actually having a goodbye kiss, having decided after much uuming and aahing to end their marriage/affair/fumble in the hay (delete where applicable).
To Natasha, it looks like they’re going at it like those rabbits she was planning to boil on the Aga.
The fallout is greater than when that passenger plane fell on the village. Mark and Maisie’s son Nathan is miffed too as it means he’s no longer the eldest Wylde boy and could lose out on his inheritance.
When money, sex and betrayal are involved there can be only one outcome – murder. Mark is dealt the Wylde card and struck down.
But who delivers the deadly blow?
And does it come first or second class post?
Soapland Police have their hands full at the minute investigating the death of evil Archie in EastEnders (BBC1) so their resources will be stretched tighter than Jordan’s brassiere dealing with a second murder.
Talking of Archie, Stacey’s pregnancy becomes public. Ask her, “who’s the daddy?” and she’ll say ex-husband Bradley, whom she’s planning to remarry. But we know that the father is Archie.
She’s carrying a Mitchell which is the soap equivalent of Rosemary’s baby or that kid in The Omen. It will be born with 666 tattooed on its head.
Not that we’re any nearer discovering the person who used Queen Victoria’s bust (bigger than Jordan’s, I’d say) to bash Archie on the bonce on Christmas Day. Ian is creeping around looking guilty. As well he might. He broke into the pub on the day of the murder to delete the recording of him and Janine having sex.
Walford’s latest arrival, Glenda, has aroused pint-sized Peggy’s suspicions. She takes out Roxy and Ronnie for a family reunion meal.
All very nice, until her credit card is rejected when she tries to pay the bill.
That’s the excuse for Peggy to let rip which, quite honestly, isn’t the sort of thing you do in polite company.
She accuses Glenda of all sorts of unpleasant things. And Peggy won’t let it lie. She orders her solicitor to do some digging into Glenda’s background before Archie’s will is read.
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