Now it’s a row about vows (From The Northern Echo)

Now it’s a row about vows

4:23pm Friday 16th December 2011 in Soap Watch By Steve Pratt

"GET me to the church on time,” sang that jolly dustman in My Fair Lady. But there’s little hope of a punctual arrival for the bridegroom in Emmerdale (ITV1) as the Rev Ashley prepares to renew his vows with wife Laurel.

But he’s not particularly keen to rest on his Laurel at present after finding out that she has feelings for Marlon.

They never got around to feeling each other, with an aborted hotel room assignation the closest they got to doing the dirty deed with each other.

But the Rev Ashley is devastated despite her pleas that the almost-affair is over and she wants to be with him, not Marlon.

Unlucky in love Marlon, though, hasn’t given up hope that Laurel will be the next woman to share his beef casserole despite his rather dodgy past record with the opposite sex.

It kicks off when Marlon is invited on the Rev Ashley’s stag night. I call it stag night, but a pint of shandy and a packet of pork scratchings in the Woolpack hardly constitutes a riotous night out.

But it does provide the Rev Ashley with the chance to berate Marlon and suggest that Laurel was just having a fling, not a lurve affair.

Next morning it’s time for the vow renewal. While the Rev Ashley ponders whether to turn up, Marlon is dashing to the church to try to win round Laurel.

We know that Walford’s evil doctor Yusef is more wicked than any pantomime villain what with trying to burn his wife alive, lying, cheating and generally behaving like a cad.

Now he resorts to kidnapping in EastEnders (BBC1).

His ex-wife, Zainab, is desperate to escape his clutches, but he insists on dragging her off to Pakistan.

She manages to lose her passport, leaving him no choice but to return home – and exact revenge by “stealing” her young child Kamil.

Ex-husband Masoon comes to the rescue, but he only inflames the situation. Mark my words, they’re all going to blazes (Boxing Day, BBC1, 9pm).

Challenging Yusef for the Abanazar Villain of the Year award is Terrible Tracy in Coronation Street (ITV1). After she’s sent tumbling down a flight of stairs during a row with the arch rival for Steve McDonald’s bed, Tracy makes out that losing her unborn twins was the result. Little does anyone know that she’d suffered a miscarriage. As you can imagine Becky isn’t a popular person as she’s assumed to be responsible for the death of the twins. What are her chances of winning back Steve now? Mark my words, they’re all going to blazes (Christmas Day, ITV1, 8pm).