How to die with dignity in Soapland
‘The Archers’ is mourning the loss of Edward Kelsey. But what of his alter ego Joe Grundy, asks Ed Power
The death of Archers actor Edward Kelsey aged 88 has been met with shock and sadness. But even as those who work on the Radio 4 soap mourn their beloved colleague, their grief will be complicated by the fact that Kelsey’s Archers character, Joe Grundy, is very much alive.
Thus they face the dramatist’s most dreaded conundrum. How to temporarily set aside the sting of loss after an actor’s death and give his or her alter ego a respectful yet coherent exit?
This is about more than just neat storytelling. Fans will be upset by ferret fancier Grundy’s departure and it falls to The Archers to provide a space in which they can mourn a friend who was part of the series for 34 years.
They will need to proceed with caution. When Coronation Street actress Anne Kirkbride died from breast cancer in 2015 at the age of 60, the way the writers dealt with the demise of her character, Deirdre Barlow, proved divisive.
Her ex-husband Ken (William Roache) learnt Deirdre had died suddenly, “possibly” due to a brain aneurysm – surely the vaguest soap death in British television history.
Deirdre’s funeral was screened eight months after her final appearance. (Deirdre had been away from Weatherfield while Kirkbride received treatment in 2014.) Yet there was criticism that the send-off was too perfunctory. Former Coronation Street writer Kay Mellor described the farewell as contrived and lacking emotional punch.
“I should have been in a heap really, there should have been something more,” she said. “I just felt as if it was engineered. It felt false somehow.”
Generally, long-running series favour a discreet drawing of the veils.
When Coronation Street’s Arthur Leslie passed away from a heart attack in 1970, viewers were told his character, original Rovers Return landlord Jack Walker, had suffered the same fate and that was the end of it (one of several occasions in which the long-running soap has ensured that art imitates life).
But sometimes the show’s writers have taken this too far. After 69-yearold Bernard Youens died having contracted gangrene, viewers were spared no details.
Stan Ogden had been admitted to hospital off-screen as Youens’s health declined. But on November 21 1984 his wife Hilda (Jean Alexander) received a phone-call explaining he’d passed away as a result of the condition – which must count as one of the most unglamorous deaths ever meted out to a character on TV.
Sometimes, the death of an actor can be fraught with jeopardy. The most extreme example occurred in a live 1958 episode of Armchair Theatre when actor Gareth Jones died of a heart attack ( just offstage) and the rest of the cast had to improvise around him until
‘I went there thinking we were all going to be in tears and it turned into an unofficial storyline conference’
the programme ended. The situation can become complicated when the actor has already shot scenes for future episodes. In the case of Only Fools and Horses, the great Lennard Pearce had returned to play Grandad for a third season when he had a fatal heart attack at the age of 69 in 1984.
He’d filmed half of the 30-minute episode, Hole In One, which was intended to open the returning series. Instead new material was put together from scratch by writer John Sullivan and followed the Trotters as they reeled from Grandad’s death.
His scenes were re-shot with Buster Merryfield replacing Pearce as new character, Uncle Albert.
What to do with future footage of an actor who has passed away suddenly proved especially problematic for the makers of Holby City, who had to deal with the tragic death of Laura Sadler in June 2003 at the age of 22.
She had already shot her scenes for several subsequent episodes when she fell to her death from a balcony. Following consultations with her family it was decided to broadcast those sequences before then revealing her character, nurse Sandy Harper, had won the lottery and secretly set off for a new life in Australia.
“I went there thinking we were all going to be in tears and it turned into an unofficial storyline conference,” Mal Young, the BBC head of drama, said of his meetings with the actress’s family and with Holby City’s writers.
“I said we would find a way of explaining Laura’s absence and her mum came up with an idea we all liked.”
As Archers listeners mourn the loss of Joe Grundy they will trust in the series to give him the farewell he deserves. The hope must be that he departs with dignity and in a fashion appropriate to a beloved character who has been part of the audience’s lives for decades.
It’s what fans want – and what Edward Kelsey would wish for Joe too.