Coronation Street Weekly Update - with love from Hale Barnes

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Corrie’s been a joy to watch this week, a real joy. There was humour, tragedy, a cat fight and a sofa. Like a perfect Christmas pudding, it had all the right ingredients, blended with just the right amount of fruit and spice. There are no sensational storylines at the minute – no murders, no tram crashes, no court scenes – and Corrie has been all the better for it, concentrating instead on the small things, the important things, the dialogue, a raised eyebrow, the acting.   And so without any further ado, here we go with this week’s Coronation Street update.

Carla and Michelle head off for a girly day out at the spa. The ladies warm to hunky spa receptionist Claudio who tells them he’ll be their masseur for the day along with his colleague Phil. Carla can barely hide her delight then isn’t best pleased when Phil turns out to be Philomena. Still, Carla and Michelle soldier on at the spa, enjoying massage and face-masks with some excellent dialogue and Carla doing her best not to do comedy while being funny all the same. I thoroughly enjoyed these scenes.  Carla’s chilled out back on the cobbles but it doesn’t last long when she finds out someone’s been in the factory and smashed the place up. She’s furious when she finds out that someone is Tracy. Again, another fantastic scene emerges with Carla and Tracy first at odds and fighting on the factory floor and then engaging, together, talking about life. “You’ve got money,” Tracy tells Carla. “The factory, your own flat.”  Carla pauses. “You’ve got Amy.” she replies. We all got the significant of that, and we all know that Tracy didn’t.

Carla’s keen to put things behind her and pays Tracy’s wedding debts to Michelle, as suppliers are hounding her for payment.  She thinks they can move on now with their lives, but Tracy gets a smirk on her face and you know she’s planning her next move.

Little Jack draws all over Kev’s sofa. Now then, when I saw this storyline on paper (well, on my computer screen) in the episode previews some weeks ago I thought little of it but it’s been a sparkler of a story that has shown Sally at her best, and worst, a lethal combination. Anyway, back to Kev and the soiled sofa.  He’s moaning in the garage when in walks a fella off the street who’s been meeting with Carla at the factory. He overhears Kevin talking about the sofa and tells him he’ll sell him his sofa as he doesn’t need it any more. And so, for £100, Kev takes delivery of a red leather sofa in the shape of a pair of leather lips.  Huge leather lips. It’s tacky and tasteless as can possibly be, but at least it means Kev’s got somewhere to sit that isn’t scribbled on.  However, it won’t fit through Kev’s front door so Tim offers to take it off Kev’s hands and swap it with the sofa in Sally’s house.  As you can imagine, when Sally comes home to find the mouth-shaped monstrosity in her living room, she’s not best pleased and chucks a mental at Tim.  Mind you, she soon comes around when she finds out that the second-hand sofa has come from a house in Hale Barnes (a posh part of Manchester, very bay window) and could be worth a bob or two.  Sofa, so good.

But then a mystery woman (and when I say ‘mystery’, I mean ‘American’) turns up on the street. She’s called Diane and sweet-talks Kev on the cobbles, asking if anyone has seen her sofa, which she thinks her soon-to-be ex-husband has sold to someone on the street.  Kev takes a fancy to her and knows that if he tells the truth about the sofa, he’ll have to give Sally’s sofa back to Sally. Not only will that mean he’s got nowhere to sit but he’ll ruin his chance of a drink with the posh (and when I say ‘posh’, I mean ‘posh but lovely with it’) woman too.  Anyway, to cut an ever-increasingly long story short, he takes her for a drink. She offers to buy the second round. “I’ll buy… you just sit there looking rugged,” she says.  Kev lies that the sofa has gone to his non-existent mate called Barney, and ends up having dinner with Diane in the Bistro just as Sally and Tim walk in. The foursome settle down for an awkward dinner which turns hilarious with Sally in full Annie Walker mode.  The posh woman is missing her sofa. Kev and Tim know the truth about the sofa, and Sally’s just pleased to have a posh sofa and a new posh best friend, not connecting the two.  What a great piece of writing and acting this was. Classic Corrie at its best – two feckless men, one upwardly mobile aspirational Sally, an American and a sofa.  More please, Corrie.

Now that Anna and Owen have moved into Carla’s old flat I’ve been beside myself with worry as to how Izzy will make it up all those stairs, especially when she said she was going to be spending Christmas with her family. Anyway, problem’s solved when Owen says he is going to be fitting a stair lift. Phew, I can breathe a sigh of relief now.

Elsewhere, Yasmeen has her eye on No. 6 Coronation Street which has come up for auction now that Anna and Owen have moved out. She tells Sharif she wants to buy it and move in. And what Yasmeen wants, she gets.

Finally this week, Sean and Sinead hit the town on a night out in Canal Street. Egged on by Sinead, Sean gives a friendly smile to a nice-looking fella at the bar, who smiles back. They talk, they chat, they flirt and swap numbers. There’s only one thing bothering Sean about this new handsome man he’s just met - he’s a vicar, good lord!

And that's just about that for this week. Remember, you can sign up to get these Corrie weekly updates by email at http://www.corrie.net/updates/weekly/subscribe.htm

This week’s writers were Mark Wadlow (Monday), Chris Fewtrell (Wednesday double) and Simon Crowther (Friday double). Find out all about the Coronation Street writing team at http://coronationstreetupdates.blogspot.com/2008/11/exclusive-all-current-corrie-writers.html

Glenda Young
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Blogging away merrily at http://flamingnora.blogspot.com

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