Top 10 Brutal Deaths in British Soaps

It was a bad start to 2004 for Baz, who got killed by his wife while on honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands! In the scenes leading up to his death, the villainous Janine had embarked on a horrible tirade, pulling no punches about Barry’s appearance and telling him how she’d never loved him, before pushing him away. And that push sent the car salesman plummeting downhill, before meeting his end by crashing into a rock. As he lays dying, safe in the knowledge he’d married a monster, Janine heartlessly watches him breathe his last.

In one of the most dramatic scenes that Weatherfield has ever witnessed, the death of everyone’s favourite squeaky-voiced son of a butcher truly pulled at the nation’s heartstrings. After an explosion which had already led to fatalities, the bridge over the famous cobbles was left utterly demolished. So then, to make matters even worse, an oncoming tram is unable to stop, crashing into the Street and bringing the curtain down on Ashley. Some viewers were left inconsolable, especially by the phone call he’d made to his wife, Claire, beforehand.

A double whammy next, and “EastEnders” at its most memorable! Inseparable until the end, the Mitchell sisters bid farewell to Albert Square in an emotional (and unusually atmospheric) drowning scene. On the day of Ronnie and Jack Branning’s wedding, an overly inebriated Roxy fatefully decides to take a swim. So, after seeing that her sister is in trouble, Ronnie jumps in after her, leading to an unfortunate wedding dress entanglement and a sad and watery end for the popular pair. And it was supposed to be a day of celebration!

This one is brutal on so many levels, so much so that it reportedly had the cast in tears too. When Kylie tries to intervene in a fight outside a kebab shop, things take a tragic and unexpected turn, when the thuggish Clayton stabs her in the chest before running away. Cue some exceptionally intense acting by Jack P. Shepherd as David, helplessly holding his wife in her final moments, in scenes to turn even the hardiest heart of steel into an emotional wreck.

A result of a parachute sabotage mix-up, Sarah’s death was hard to take for fans. After plenty of back-stabbing, cheating and double-crossing between them, friends Lydia, Zoe and Sarah plan a skydiving excursion. However, Lydia loves Sarah and wants her all to herself… So, she decides to slash Zoe’s parachute. But the storyline takes an even darker twist when, unknown to Lydia and the audience, Sarah takes the sabotaged pack, before falling to her death - rounding off the storyline in dramatic and deadly fashion.

From Spandau Ballet to Albert Square, Martin Kemp’s very popular Walford character met a rather explosive end in 2002. The storyline is even rumoured to have been real-life pay back from producers, because Kemp had quit the soap in favour of new pursuits on ITV. Either way, during a car chase with the ever-furious Phil Mitchell, his on-screen arch enemy, Steve careers off road, clatters into a motorcycle and gets himself trapped in his burning wreck of a vehicle. Phil rescues the baby from the backseat, but there’s no time to even try to save Steve.

Next, a moment to trigger a truly brutal sequence of events in Emmerdale, centering on a man who had already been kidnapped and drugged during his time in the Yorkshire Dales. James Barton gets ruthlessly pushed off a bridge and onto a car, which then becomes part of a huge, hellish pile up. And although James somehow initially survives the accident, he eventually passes away in hospital. This death is savage for many reasons, the biggest one being that the woman who pushed him - that’s his wife, Emma! She also considered cutting his life support, when he nearly made it through!

Another Dales death, and this one will truly make you wince. Because Val Pollard’s final scene was like something out of a horror film! The stage is set when a helicopter crash at an already disastrous wedding causes Val and her sister Dianne to be trapped in a hall of mirrors. The pair embark on a deep heart-to-heart in what they both believe are their final moments, but Dianne is saved by the emergency services. Which leaves Val to face-off with a dangling shard of glass. Even though everyone expected it to fall, it was still a shock when it did!

In a gruesome death that was as squeamish as it was shocking, Trina’s demise at the hands of the notorious Lucas is about as brutal as it gets! After arranging a rendezvous in Charlie Slater’s allotment shed during their affair, Trina goes to kiss and make-up with Lucas after an argument. But in a subsequent scuffle, she falls neck-first into a rake, impaling herself and eventually bleeding out.Lucas doesn’t exactly offer to help, and ultimately covers for himself by planting drugs on Trina’s lifeless body. He was a pretty awful bloke all round!

We finish on the famous Weatherfield cobbles, for a character demise that more resembles something out of “The Godfather” - with the infamous Pat Phelan at his most murderous. Viewers had previously thought that Andy was already dead, killed by Pat by a blow to the head with his own laptop. However, it turns out that Andy was alive (though not so ‘well’), locked up in Phelan’s secret basement. And so, to some incredibly tense scenes, as Andy’s forced to Kill Pat’s former-partner-turned-enemy, Vinny. But shooting Vinny doesn’t bring Andy freedom from his nightmare. Instead, Pat guns him down, too. No rest for the wicked, eh.