Roy comes a Cropper (Reflections on Monday's double bill)

Hi there,

I'm new to the site, but have been writing TV previews for magazines and TV-related blogs for a number of years. Yet I've never before been able to indulge my love of Corrie. Here's my first post. Please be kind, but let me know what you think.

If only Roy hadn’t picked up the bat phone. He’d be sitting at home eating one of Hayley’s doorstop sandwiches instead of fighting for his life in the Weatherfield canal. As it is, we now have to wait until Thursday to see if a Good Samaritan will wander by, inflate Roy’s ever-present shopping bag and get him to use it as a life buoy. Why can’t we have one of those extra Wednesday episodes that ITV1 often sneaks into the schedule in order to sustain the momentum?

The tension in Monday’s double bill was pretty much relentless. I say ‘relentless’, there was the scene in which Gail does what she always does whenever she’s in a relationship: sit on the sofa and coo in the face of her fiancé as though he’s a newborn baby. Oh, and the low-rent version of Dynasty in which Krystle and Alexis, sorry Eileen and Julie, pulled at each other’s ears for two minutes. Apart from that, the two instalments were a sweaty-palmed success.

After weeks of seeing Tony stare fixedly at the door of the microwave as he waits for baby Liam’s bottle to warm up, he finally took action. Stalking Roy to a stretch of water that’s seen more death than the Red Sea, he took out a knife he’d purloined from the café and went in for the kill. As the pair battled it out, all the other week’s storylines were banished from our minds. This was the main event. And quite right too – who wanted any more scenes in which Sally channelled Mary Whitehouse and Charles Bronson in order to mete out justice? Thought not.

The other joy was, of course, witnessing Maria’s moment of realisation. It’s been a while coming, but then Maria is a woman with odd priorities. She’s the only new mum in existence who manages to find the time for make-up and French-polished nails when living a life of sleepless nights and nappy changes. Samia Smith, obviously tired of being filmed from the neck up or holding a cushion across her swelling abdomen, relished the opportunity to let rip.

In retrospect though, Maria will regret not playing the long game. Knowing Tony’s true potential, she could easily have manipulated a situation in which she handed her man in to the police only after making sure that his next victim was the loathsome Helen. Once the in-laws make a return visit at the end of the week, Maria might well be viewing it as a missed opportunity.