Coronation Street - 5 New Year Resolutions it should keep

Resolution 1

Carla and Roy are the best thing about Corrie right now. It is beautiful to see two people who are not related and not lovers, yet have enormous love and respect for each other. Don’t make the relationship smooth running, let’s have plenty of conflict (in fairness, Carla’s return has started well) and writers, please accentuate how both need each other and let us witness true altruism at work.

Resolution 2

Wrap up quickly the Chesney, Daniel, Sinead love triangle. There is hope this may happen as it is rumoured that Carla and Daniel (!) will have a passionate love affair, though make it brief please as long term it doesn’t bode well. Peter, Daniel, maybe Adam too? That is surely enough Barlow for any woman. Ken next? Sorry, sorry, shouldn’t even have mentioned it…

Resolution 3

And so to Fiz – Jennie McAlpine is a great actor but she is being desperately under-used. Also, her current life has no joy in it. Give the woman a break. If she’s not berating Tyrone for overspending or staying longer than his allotted half hour in The Rovers, she’s comforting her brother, Chesney. She should lighten up and act her age. How can she be so ground down? She appears to live the life of a middle aged person in the 1950s rather than someone 2017  in her thirties. Yes, she has responsibilities but that doesn’t mean that you should give up and become a shrew.

Resolution 4

When the wonderful Steph comes back, give her plenty of air time. She is a consummate actor and as yet, her talent has not been fully employed. Maybe she could be a woman on a mission, with a burning ambition. Give her some fun too and please do not immediately link her with a love interest or make her pregnant. Bring in her brother, Luke and let them have an argument over some past/present family difficulty, where brother resents sister and vice versa. That would make for good viewing. It would also mirror aspects of real life sibling relationships.

Resolution 5

And now for a general plea in the new year. Please resolve to have more conversations, perhaps between people you wouldn’t ordinarily put together. Let’s have more humour, more misunderstandings, more gossip. Please resolve to have fewer really dramatic moments. No more falling off cliffs, no more murders, no more crazy coincidences when discoveries that someone else contributed to a death over a decade ago and by utter and complete chance landed in Weatherfield, a small town by anyone’s measure, which just happens to be where the relatives of the dead person abide.

                  A heartfelt thank you!

Happy 2018 to all wonderful Coronation Street Blog readers and to all amazing bloggers.

I hope it’s the best one yet for all of you!

By Ruth Owen, Twitter @ruth1722

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Conversation Street year end awards

This is the sixth year that Michael and Gemma at Conversation Street, an excellent Corrie podcast, have put together a year end awards show. These are awards with a difference. Yes, there are awards for best actor and actress but there are also awards for the best redhead, the best fight, the worst storyline, and more, all with creative award titles.

They run a poll in December to get listener votes on the nominations they establish from the year on Coronation Street and give the listener vote 2/3 of the weight in the final decision with their own opinions counting for the rest of it.

At the end of the podcast, they also do predictions for the coming year, both from listener feedback and from their own speculation.

Conversation Street is a fab podcast and they don't do spoilers unless it's major breaking news and then it's isolated at the very end of the podcast episode so you can avoid it if you don't want to know.

Listen to the awards here.

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State of the Street - December 2017

The Street was in a bit of sad state of affairs this month. Not a lot of Christmas spirit at all. There may have been happy familes and excited kids but we barely saw any of them at all. There were plenty of scenes with Billy who has transformed from Vicar to Martyr over his involvement in the death of Susan Barlow those many years ago when he didn't insist that the driver of the getaway car he was in stop and help the injured woman after they crashed into the other car. He finally confessed to Peter and it all went even more pear shaped than a pear shaped thing, ending up with Billy at the bottom of a cliff.

Daniel and Chesney are each trying to show Sinead that the other is not worthy of her heart. She's back together with Chesney but there are still occaisional longing glances she's sending Daniel's way while planning her wedding to Chesney.

Gary's dead and then he's not and he and Sarah have broken up, yes, again because she knows he got someone pregnant. I didn't think she knew who it was but by Christmas day it seemed she did judging from the way she was screaming at Eileen from across the road.

Phelan continued his drive to have Anna behind bars permanently. We know she didn't hurt Seb and chances are she'll get cleared for that. But she escaped custody and then assaulted Eileen. I think she's doomed.

Carla's back and she's harbouring a secret, an illness that only Roy knows about so far. While kidney donors don't have to be dead first, is this a precursor to the demise of one of her loved ones? 

All this and more on this month's State of the Street.



Tvor (Twitter @tvordlj)

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5 things I love about Coronation Street right now

As the year heads to a close, I'm feeling a bit confused about Coronation Street. I've written a little something to that effect here.

But it's too easy to sit here being a keyboard warrior writing all the things that I think is wrong with the show. All the things that I think are wrong with it are things you might think are right. And if we swapped lists, there'd be things on your list that I couldn't agree with, I'm sure. 

What's important is that Corrie still ignites the passion within us fans. We care - a lot - when it's not going well and love it even more when it is.

Trying to brighten my day then before the year ends, here are the five things that I'm loving about Corrie right now.

1. Jenny flaming Bradley

Yes, I know she's Jenny Connor but she'll always be Jenny Bradley to me. Always fun to watch. Bring on the fireworks between her and Carla, please.

2. Gemma Winter

Gemma is a gem. She deserves to be behind the bar at the Rovers instead of drippy Toyah(*) and changed-personality Peter. (*I love Toyah, but she doesn't work with Peter and neither of them deserve to be at the Rovers).

3. Tracy and Steve

I am loving Tracy and Steve back together. It might not last, and it shouldn't, of course. Steve should be with Leanne. But until that happens (if it does), then I'm enjoying every second of these two pretending to play happy families. Tracy's behaviour now reminds me of Deirdre, who's still much missed of course.

4. Michelle Connor

Given the right storyline, Kym Marsh acts everyone else off the screen. The late miscarriage storyline this year had me in pieces and Kym's powerful performance was incredible.  But then.. what? They stuck her with Robo-Robert. Get rid of him, Corrie and give the Bistro to Michelle to run in competition with Liz back at the Rovers. Now that's a fight I'd like to see. And Liz to win, of course.

5. Liz, Sally, Rita, Gail, Audrey

Okay, I know that's five women but please Corrie, let's see more of them. Stop the focus, just briefly on Kate and Rana. Just because there's a noise on Twitter about them, doesn't mean every single one of your viewers is a #Kana fan. It also doesn't mean that every single one of your viewers is on Twitter. Please remember this and don't lose sight of what you are - a television programme - not a social media fad.

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Should auld acquaintance be forgot...?

Our Blogger Stevie Dawson wrote a love letter to Coronation Street this week. 

When I read it I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. He managed to say everything I am currently feeling about Corrie.

It's a show that I love. It's a show that I grew up watching and it has always been a part of my life, part of my DNA. I watched it with my grandma and my mam when I was little. Grandma loved Elsie Tanner, as did I, while mam wasn't too keen on the tart with a heart, thinking she was setting a bad example to her daughter. Ooh.. she was! 

I've stuck with the show over the years, through thick and thin, as its producers changed at the helm. And in the past I've compared being a die-hard Corrie fan to that of supporting your favourite football team. You might yell at the manager, you might want your favourite player to be called up from the subs bench, but you never lose faith.  You always renew your season ticket... don't you?

2017 was the year when Corrie went to six episodes, a step too far for this fan, with all that it brought in terms of character personality transplants, stories that hop about without build-up giving fans no chance to invest in them, no chance to care. 

I could go on but I won't. I need to get a grip. I've changed, yes of course I have. But so has the show.  Let's see what 2018 brings. 

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Corrie weekly updates for 2017 available in ebook

All of the Coronation Street weekly updates for 2017 are now available in one little e-book here.

And you can view the full range of each year's worth of weekly updates here.

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