and some are still annoyed over Dame Tiffany Mitchell.

And don't get some people started on Danielle

Not me mind. I loathed that dreary sap

Janine?!

I think the only way they could get away with a Kylie recast is if they find a woman who is pretty much the spitting image of Paula Lane and around the same age. Not like Nick, Ben Price looks about 10 years older than he's meant to be

But I can't think of any women who look a lot like her. I've always thought Tulisa looks a bit like her in SOME pictures but she's not an actress so that's out the question

I hope Kylie has an identical twin that she didn't know about and when the bosses find Paula Lane's own lookalike, they bring her in the show

Are there any actresses who look a lot like Paula Lane?

Isn't it true that when she died, a bunch of sad fans left flowers outside of Elstree?

Your right they do. But Kylie didn't have to, she deserved a happy ending

Yes that's true

The grim reaper can be as free and easy as he likes in soapland, nothing is necessarily permanent.

On the recasting point - yes Kylie has been a popular character, but then there were many popular characters in Corrie in the 50 years before she even joined. I'm sure that if many more of those characters who had been killed off, were re-cast instead, then there would have been no room or place for such a new character to have been introduced.

I imagine that plenty of the actors over the years who have been killed off, were killed off because they were judged by TPTB as not being good enough/perhaps had done something wrong or behaved poorly in one way or another. That way there would be no way they could come back again.

Many of the actors want to be killed off. It's a soap and many actors see it as a stepping stone to a better acting career. After serving a couple of years or whatever it is, the death scene gets lots of publicity and it's a shop window for their acting abilities in the hope that the theatre, films or a golden handshake with ITV drama comes calling.

What's interesting to know where the culture of deaths came from. I don't know much about early Corrie. Were many characters killed off during the 1960s? The kitchen sink beginnings and culture of British soaps help move storylines in the direction of brutal deaths, but has it always been the case?

Yeah death scenes get a lot of publicity but the actor can still become famous without it. When Sarah Michelle Gellar was on All My Children, her character Kendall was very popular and important as Kendal was Erica's daughter yet they choose to just have Kendall get engaged and move away. SMG was able to have a ver successful career in prime time and in films and All My Children recast the role about 10 years later and everyone was fine with the recast.

As for the culture of death and this is me guessing, but from what I've read I think it goes back to Brookside, just from reading about it that show did a lot of deaths and I think its popularity had an influence on what the other shows did. From what I've read and seen in clips Corrie wasn't killing people off so easily like they do now.

No to the final question. There were far fewer deaths of regular characters prior to the 1990s - and the majority of those were probably when the actors died. It was in the 90s,as the cast expanded and the stories became more melodramatic that deaths became much more commonplace on the Street.

I actually enjoy a good soap death sometimes. When written well and given the full impact on the characters left behind it can be some of soaps best emotive drama. On the other hand they have to be spread out well and planned down to the last detail or they become very stale and everyday. Hollyoaks get get a lot of (rightly so) criticism for the way they brutally dispatch characters one episode and completely erase any trace of them in the next episode. In these cases it does become very pointless and blinkered as far as the characters are concerned. The majority of them could return at some point as they still have bags of storyline potential and under different writers/producers could have thrived but now we're left with 'what if' and a degree of frustration.

Killing a character off shouldn't be taken lightly, but at the same time they shouldn't keep characters alive on the off chance they may one day chose to return. Hollyoaks (sorry i am picking on them a bit) chickened out of killing off Brendan Brady and i think even fans of the character agree it was probably not worth it for the lame exit he ended up with just in case by some miracle he wanted to return. Sometimes killing a character off is the only way to realistically say goodbye to a character and in grief it opens a lot of storyline opportunities for the characters left behind.

British soaps are known for being 'grittier' and more rooted in realism than American soaps. Although the soaps can be OTT and sometimes downright bizarre they are more supposed to be an exaggerated version of real life melodramas whereas i think American soaps prefer the more almost fantasy elements of soaps. Thats one of the reasons people don't really like recasts in soaps much. Its fine for one or two characters (or mainly children) but to remain that element of realism the actors are usually associated with 'their' roles that it can be very unsettling to see someone else (no matter how good) in the role. Obviously its on a character by character basis but usually if they can't get the original actor back they'll just scrap plans to bring the character back or work around their absence some other way. It does cause problems for big events like weddings, funerals etc but its usually just easier not to mention why 'so and so' didn't come.

A soap death also breaks up the normality of characters leaving in a taxi/train which can become very repetative with the turnover in British soaps. Neighbours use the same 'leaving in a yellow taxi waving out the window to friends/family' exit quite a lot and while its nice to see characters leave happily/alive it can also become a bit stagnant and dull almost like being given the same exit scripts of another character just with their name crossed out and yours put in there which must be a bit disappointing. Sometimes an exit has to be a bit more final and exciting than moving away for a new job.

Murder is used to much as an exit though. People do die other ways than being bludgeoned/shot/stabbed. I always prefer a death to be emotional, character lead drama. When a murders brought into it it becomes very tedious with the police never getting the right person and the storyline always becomes less about the person who died and more about the person who did it/didn't do it.

This is the issue I have, the British soaps are supposed to be realistic but IMHO the number of deaths (and disasters but that's a topic for another thread) are unrealistic, if these characters were real they'd be so depressed about the amount of deaths they've experienced in their lives.

I really don't understand the resistance to recast roles. Recasts can be a great thing and are not just used when an actor wants to leave. Sometimes the writers will take the character in a new direction that they feel the current actor can't portray so they recast or other times TPTB realize they made a casting mistake after the actor appears on screen so they recast to fix their mistake so its a way of salving a character instead of just writing them out.

I agree with your point Mark about the amount of tragedy that some characters have suffered as a result of all these deaths. Michelle,for example,lost both of her brothers in their prime within a couple of years of each other. But,like most,she seems largely unaffected. After a few weeks it's all pretty much forgotten.

Exactly the deaths have little long term effect and now the show has one less character that they could bring back. I would really like to see one of the soaps go a full year without killing a character off.

We've seen Eastenders producers regret the decisions made by their predecessors in killing off iconic characters- they've even brought two back from the dead. I think that they should only kill off an important character where it's unavoidable to do anything else in story terms. I do think that Corrie may regret killing off Tina and the other recently confirmed death. Two popular and significant characters who might have been happy to return in a few years time.