It's Coronation Street - German style

Did you know that 30 years ago, the format of Coronation Street was shipped overseas to Germany where they started running their own version of it called Lindenstrasse? 

No, neither did I.

However, because it's now Lindenstrasse's 30th anniversary, they're quite rightfully blowing their own German soap trumpet.

And there's a good article on the BBC website from John Jungclaussen, who is the London correspondent for Die Zeit magazine.  John travelled to meet the cast of Germany's Corrie clone to find out how the German soap compares to Corrie.

Lindenstrasse, which literally means Lime Street, was created by the eccentric Hans Geissendorfer - a renowned director and the man behind some of Germany's most successful feature films. He became hooked on Coronation Street while visiting his British girlfriend in London and returned to Germany in the belief that audiences were missing something big.

Inside Soap magazine editor Stephen Murphy was particularly taken with the throwback to the old kitchen sink drama - the realism - of Coronation Street in years gone by.

Listen to the documentary about this soap in a programme called Coronation Strasse on BBC Radio 4 at 10:30 BST on Saturday 20 April and afterwards on the BBC iPlayer.
 

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