Brookside’s “groundbreaking” rape storyline is to be reshown in full for the first time in almost four decades. Individual episodes of the storyline have been shown since it first aired in 1986, but streaming service STV Player is to allow viewers to watch all parts together for the first time in 38 years, on July 3. The episodes tell the story of Sue Johnston’s character, Sheila Grant, being attacked and raped after getting out of a taxi on Brookside Close, and go on to show the emotional impact on Grant and her family, as well as the hunt for her attacker.
STV Player has been releasing five episodes each Wednesday, since acquiring the rights to Brookside in February 2023 (STV Player/PA) The platform’s viewers have now reached July 1986, meaning they have watched the equivalent of three-and-a-half years of the show’s original timeline. Brookside was one of the first TV soaps to show a rape storyline, with other early depictions coming in US series General Hospital, in 1979, and in EastEnders in 1988, with the rape of Kathy Beale. She told ITV in a 2018 interview: “I was slightly nervous about it, because I had in my own life, when I was 27, been sexually attacked.
“I was attacked from behind, and he ran, and I could hear him, and I turned around and I could see him at the side of this bridge, and I realised how lonely it was. “The drama was going to happen and this guy was going to run up behind me, and grab me and drag me into these bushes. “I was fright.
