Birds of a Feather

- Season 7

(1997)

Sharon is not happy. Not only is dippy swimming pool customer Beverley getting to her but the news that Darryl will be home in a fortnight leaves her facing eviction - and worse, the return of Chris. When Darryl's leave is postponed following a fight with a Greek inmate Tracey assumes it's Chris but on discovery that it was another prisoner she tells Sharon she can stay.

Whilst Tracey worries that Garth might be developing criminal tendencies, Sharon, aware that Darryl will be home soon, worries about her future. Dorien, feeling bad for teasing her in the past, invites her out for a day of pampering but it's not the sort of pampering Sharon is into so she tells Dorien she is going to a funeral instead. Trying to be sympathetic, Dorien offers to come with her and eventually they do end up at one.

Darryl and Chris are free at last but Chris gets hit by a car and has to go to hospital, leaving Sharon free to invite 'Snotty' Scotty to Darryl's welcome home party. Things are less rosy for Tracey, who discovers that Darryl is impotent and for Dorien when Marcus finally catches her in the act with a business associate.

Tracey and Darryl resume their noisy love-life, annoying Sharon - who's starting to feel left out - as well as Garth. When Sharon and Darryl argue over the Highgate swimming pool job Tracey sides with Darryl and lets him throw her sister out. She joins Chris in his grubby bed-sit. Dorien is also thrown out by Marcus, and when she goes to retrieve some incriminating photos of herself, finds that he seems to have a love child with another woman.

Waking up in Chris's grotty room, Sharon does not share his view that the marriage can be saved - or Tracey's view that Darryl should be allowed to run the pool business. When Darryl and Chris are caught with Doddsy, an ex-con for whom they are hoping to build a pool, along with a case of counterfeit money, Sharon is proved right as both men are sent back to prison. Dorien tracks down Marcus's mistress and, posing as Sharon the barmaid, learns some home truths.

With the husbands back inside, the roles are oddly reversed. Tracey feels Darryl has let her down and goes to the rugby club dance where she meets and sleeps with Joe, whilst it's Sharon who feels Chris has been wronged. She even appears on a live chat show on his behalf but ends up assaulting Headline Hound, its annoying mascot. Dorien confronts Marcus at his mistress, Geraldine's house, and is reinstated next door to Tracey and Sharon again.

To her horror Tracey learns that all the money from the business is lost and her only collateral is the house, which she eventually sells, down-sizing with Sharon to the less fashionable Ongar. It's time for Garth to leave the nest too as he gets serious with his girl-friend Kimberley and moves into a flat with her. Dorien, however, is enjoying the fruits of her new-found freedom.

Sharon and Tracey get a visit in Ongar from Dorien, who has come back from Monte Carlo. She has been hanging out with Ralph Gardener, head of a water company, and frequently in the news and she plans to make it onto the front pages of the tabloids via her affair with him. Tracey does not approve, and is no more in favour of Sharon's desire to get pregnant.

Garth is concerned about Darryl's state of mind and Tracey is eventually persuaded to visit him in prison. Sharon goes along with her to see Chris but their train breaks down. Dorien, on the other hand, is enjoying the high life, having sold her story to the tabloid newspapers and is living it up in a hotel.

Whilst Sharon is driving her mad talking about sperm donors because she is anxious for a baby, Tracey discovers that she is pregnant but unfortunately she doesn't know who the father is. Dorien resorts to blackmail when she hears that Marcus wants to install his Geraldine into the Greens' family home - and gets her way.