Axed? Says who?

The imminent death of Brookside came as a surprise to the long-running soap's creator, Phil Redmond. He tells Meg Carter of his exasperation with Channel 4

"Brookside Axed" the headlines blared. And so it seemed, following Channel 4's announcement that, from late November, it will drop the show's weeknight outings and so relegate the currently thrice-weekly soap to a 90-minute Saturday teatime slot. But are reports of Brookside's death premature? Its creator, Phil Redmond, seems to think so.

Redmond claims that he was told by Channel 4 of its decision to re-schedule Brookside just 48 hours ahead of the broadcaster making its plans public and that he had to turn to news reports to find out what was going on. More perplexing, though, was the timing of the announcement – just as Redmond was putting the finishing touches to a £1.5m revamp of the show ahead of its 20th anniversary on 2 November. The channel, which had already begun a peaktime teaser campaign, had yet to see a single frame of the new-look show, he claims.

"The current situation is... well, we really don't know," Redmond says. "We got 48 hours' notice of the schedule change, and that was that. Why now, given that there has been all this upheaval and change in the show and, of course, massive investment on both sides? We've never had any crunch talks with them, aside from when we came down to genuflect [to the new management] and I discussed turning Brookside from the sensational soap it had become into a long-form drama for 18- to 34-year-olds, able to connect with Britain again."

The way the channel has made clear its intentions and the exact status of Brookside today is anything but transparent. Unable to cancel the show before the end of Brookside producer Mersey Television's current contract – which runs until the end of 2003 – little effort was made to counter perceptions that by cancelling its weeknight slot, its death sentence was as good as signed. So has Brookside been axed or not? Channel 4 remains tight-lipped, saying that the show will air until late 2003 and that what happens beyond that is unconfirmed.

Redmond is the first to admit that Brookside had to change, and fundamentally: "With my hand on heart, last December I felt I didn't like Brookside – it looked like a soap that was just churning through, doing things by rote." Recent years had been characterised by a downward spiral of ratings and increasingly sensational storylines. Then, earlier this year, Redmond confirmed plans to take a more hands-on involvement in storylining and day-to-day production. A plot concerning child bullying and the murder of a bully by her victim was intended to signify a new era for the show, which would now focus more closely on real issues affectingordinary people's everyday lives.

Since then, Redmond has instigated a total overhaul of how Brookside is made and how it will now look on screen from its 20th anniversary onwards. Out will go tired soap conventions such as straightforward linear narrative and real-time plot development. In will come flash-backs and more naturalistic overlapping dialogue.

Despite Brookside's pioneering use of steadicam in its early years, the show's look has become formulaic and staid, Redmond admits. "We have now changed the whole mindset. We increased the pagination of scripts so that, with tighter editing, the internal pace of the drama could be stepped up. I believe we have got greater fluidity, movement and pace back into the show," he says. It has been a conscious re-working of soap convention: "Now Brookside is 20 I want it to be closer to a long-running version of Cold Feet or Clocking Off."

Or rather, that's what he had hoped. For it must surely now take a ratings miracle for Brookside to capture a significant enough audience uplift in just one 90-minute slot a week to persuade Channel 4's bosses to think again.

Redmond's response to events of the past 10 days is understandably guarded. "I suppose it's all to do with collapsing ratings post-Big Brother and the feeling that they should get to grips with ratings more quick- ly," he says. Inevitably, he is unhappy that a decision to reinvest and revamp Brookside that was made by the previous chief executive, Michael Jackson, and, until this month,apparently endorsed by his successor Mark Thompson, now looks pointless.

"It's no secret Channel 4 conceded the 8pm weeknight slot in 1998/9. Since then, ITV has really got its act together and it has become increasingly difficult to try something different at this time," says Redmond, directing his criticism at the old management for regularly bumping Brookside around the schedule, so weakening viewers' "appointment to view".

"I always felt Brookside should have gone out at 10pm – it worked well for S4C, although I doubt anyone in the metropolitan media noticed. In that later slot we could have explored more grown-up issues and Channel 4 could have colonised it as a drama slot. But it seems to have gone the other way in recent months. Between 6pm and 7pm is kids' happy hour, then from 10 onwards, it's adults doing daft things. I'm not sure that's what viewers really want. But I can't run their business for them."