Last night I settled down on the sofa, mug of mulled wine within easy reach, and watched some classic Victoria Wood from her 1980s As Seen On TV series. I've always had a soft spot for Ms Wood's comedy, of which the highlight has to be her classic parody of 1960s Coronation Street. Who can forget that sketch set in the Rovers' snug with Victoria as Ena Sharples, Julie Walters as Martha Longhurst and Lill Roughley as Minnie Caldwell? See the famous sketch here. Although the sketch gently sends up the Street, it is always affectionate and never cruel. I would love to have seen this idea develop further. 
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8 comments:
I would love to see Victoria Wood write for Coronation Street too. Also, I think Caroline Aherne, Craig Cash and Alan Bleasdale would be great too. The attention given to sensationalist storylines in the last fifteen years has removed so much of the social realism that defines those writers and also made the Street so successful in the first place. It would be great too recapture that again.
No way. This would show up the mediocre wrting that is the norm these days.
Sadly, Coronation Street has become Acorn Antiques with its ridiculous plotlines and one dimensional characters.
I agree it would be impossible to satirize the Corrie of today. I believe it was done for Children In Need with Liz and others visiting Eastenders. It had a soap cliche spoof in it where Liz discovers her long lost daughter in Albert Square. Some Corrie fans got confused thinking Liz really had a long lost daughter. It just shows how these twist-per-minute plots are too ridiculous to spoof.
Coronation Street needs good writers far more than good writers need Coronation Street - or what it has become.
They won't be showing up anytime soon, either, because it's a sort of B-grade writers' graveyard at the moment. The taint would stay with them and blight all hope of a future career.
At this point I'd be thrilled to see writer/fans take over writing the show. At least they'd give a crap about the direction of the show and touch base with other viewers to take the temperature of storylines. I know, I know, we've been told that even the most ridiculous storylines are apparently run past "viewers" for assessment but I'm starting to question if the test audience is made up of the writers' mothers!
I wasn't suggesting they should recruit Victoria Wood to show up faults with the current writing team. I think there are still some very good writers on the Coronation Street team and the dialogue is still far superior to Corrie's rivals.
By special episode are we talking about just one episode in the regular run of the series or one of those DVD foreign holiday caper one-off's?
Because, there's a world of difference between having the authority to dictate the direction of storylines and being a regular Corrie scritwriter waiting to be chosen by the producer as the one to put actual dialogue into the bare bones of an episode.
- An episode that's already been plotted out and agreed upon, by a collabrative team effort, and handed over to the chosen writer, to then 'write up'.
Victoria Wood had 100% control over the content of her shows much like Tony Warren had back in the day. Her "voice" as we know it wouldn't be discernable on Corrie to the average viewer.
Why do I say that? Well here's a quote from the scriptwriter chosen to write up the 50th anniversary tram crash episode, talking about how that episode came into being:
"...Mr Turner said there were 17 or 18 writers on the team, half a dozen storyliners, a story editor, an assistant producer and a producer. "We have a meeting every three weeks and we spend 2 or 3 days in Manchester" he said."
- Victoria Wood would not be allowed to go off in a completely opposite direction and do her own thing unless it was one of those DVD specials.
There'd be great one-liners in her episode for sure though.
As a rule I don't like the DVD specials they make, however I might be tempted if one was written by Victoria Wood, and didn't feature some of the preposterous stories or locations past specials have used.
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