Cain unable to save Dingle in the dock
The trial has been going on for a month and kept us all gripped, but Tuesday finally saw the passing of the verdict and Kerry got the job at Bernice’s beauty salon.
Meanwhile, over in a courtroom in Leeds, Belle Dingle was finding out if she was going to be the latest member of her family to see the inside of a prison cell.
If anyone hadn’t been watching Emmerdale for a while but decided to tune in to see Tuesday’s double-length episode they would have been left thinking Belle had turned into a mob kingpin from the picture painted of her by the prosecution.
It’s not worth recapping what has been going on since this storyline began at the end of February because none of it has really made sense and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t get past the opening of a file stage with the Crown Prosecution Service in real life. But suffice to say that, being a Dingle, Belle has been badly advised at every turn by her family and was facing a murder charge after getting into a schoolgirl fight with her best mate Gemma.
I’m frequently assured that size isn’t everything but Belle looked more like Tinker Bell alongside Gemma so the “history of sustained persecution” which the snooty brief alluded to in her summing up surely wouldn’t have washed with a jury. But why let that get in the way of a staple of our soaps a miscarriage of justice.
One thing you can say for the Dingles is that they pull together in a crisis and seeing his half-sister in the dock has brought out the softer side in Cain, or at least made his eyebrows grow apart.
But they narrowed decidedly after Dom’s “sorry I’m late” intervention in court only resulted in a fresh charge of manslaughter and I fear for the distraught dad’s future if he decides to return.
Belle going down for manslaughter was much more believable (because that’s what it was) and after debating the new charge for less than an hour the jury delivered a guilty verdict.
“I’m going to put a wash on,” said the suddenly house-proud Lisa as soon as she got home before breaking down and wailing: “I just can’t.”
Perhaps she realised that this is one stain on the family name that won’t come out in the wash.
ITV, Monday-Friday
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