Watch Brookside over 40 years after it aired

• A video report by Granada Reports' Entertainment Correspondent Caroline Whitmore

The iconic Scouse soap Brookside is returning to an online streaming service for fans to binge watch from the very beginning.

The show, which ran from 1982 to 2003 and spanned nearly 3,000 episodes, is coming to STV Player. The first 10 episodes are already live, with five more being added each week.

For a lot of the stars, it kick started their acting careers.

Ricky Tomlinson, who played Bobby Grant, said: "I'm absolutely made up. I know I'm still a sex symbol but in them days I was on par with many of these big Yankee stars.

"I'd only done one job before and it was shown on a Saturday night, Brookside was just coming into being then.

"Andy Lynch picked up the phone and said - 'I've just found my Bobby Grant'".

Leon Lopez who played Jerome Johnson, said: "I was so bad...the first year or so I was just whispering all my lines.

"I learnt from some of the best actors in the world who have gone through that show."

The show pushed social boundaries at the time - including the first pre-watershed Lesbian kiss on television and a domestic abuse storyline resulting in murder.

Robert Smith who played Gizzmo Hawkins, said : "When we started it was really gritty, and political.

"It's going to be interesting to see what the next generation think of it."

One of Granada Reports own journalists has featured in the show - Elaine Willcox made a brief cameo.

A superfan of the show said its return is a "dream come true".

"It's what the fans have wanted for years," he said.

"Brookside was always known as the one that did everything first. All the controversies, everything that soaps wouldn't dare to do, Brookside did it first."

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