Carry on Corrie - some thoughts on current storylines

By Stephen Leach, who is in Twitter @SirTerenceBoot, our guest blogger, who shares his thoughts on current Coronation Street.

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Spare a thought for Sarah Platt: after only doing the occasional shift at the Rovers every other week for the past three years, going full-time as Carla’s PA must be exhausting. No wonder we’ve hardly seen her in recent weeks, she must be working flat-out. Mind you, as talented as Sarah is, she’s nothing compared to Leanne, whose years of experience as a waitress, table dancer, bistro manager, and escort apparently now qualify her to be a legal secretary. Personally, I can’t think of anyone in the world less suited to graciously welcome potential clients into my office than Leanne: she really is a singularly unpleasant woman. Always mouthing off about something. And she seems to have been hired exclusively so she can smirk at Imran and play tonsil tennis with him between meetings.

A love triangle between a vegan, an ex-prostitute, and a lawyer sounds awfully like the premise for a bad Channel 4 sitcom, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the Imran-Toyah-Leanne story. I suppose I always enjoy it when Corrie goes a bit Carry On, and Imran was especially good at it: constantly making “ooh missus!” facial expressions, hastily stuffing his shirt into his trousers and re-buttoning his collar every time Adam or Leanne walked into the room after another romp with Toyah. “Have you been hard at it, Imran?” “What?! Er, yes… been bent over my desk all morning. I mean, really giving it to them. I mean…”

Is that it for Kate and Rana? Honestly, probably not, but try and enjoy the break while you can: six weeks without them hysterically crying and wailing at each other will probably feel like five minutes once Rana returns to Weatherfield. I’d expected Kate to fall back into Sophie’s slightly-predatory arms once Rana left, but no, it turns out Sophie’s busy with someone else: Paula (played by the wonderfully-named Stirling Gallacher). “Are you a lesbian?” asked Sophie hesitantly. “No,” said Paula, “if anything, I’m bisexual,” and balloons and confetti promptly fell from the sky along with a banner reading “finally, finally, someone finally said the sodding word”. Is there someone at Granada reading my tweets? Unfortunately, Paula feels like a character with a shelf life. One suspects she’s hiding a hideous secret: she’s a middle-class lawyer, after all, and characters like that never turn out to be good people.

I’m a bit too young to remember Tyrone’s mother, so her death went over my head somewhat. And I certainly can’t work up the effort to be interested in this resulting story about him trying to find out who he is. But we’ve been rewarded for our trouble with the presence of Maureen Lipman, so I’ll try to bear through it. If she turns out to be his real grandmother, I’ll stand on my head outside Buckingham Palace and put a sparkler up my bottom. No doubt Tyrone will let her continue living at his house anyway.

Then there’s the Hannah/Katie story. Has anyone told Andy he’s got a sister yet? One would think he’d want to fly in to meet her, but then again, the journey from Spain to the UK is a notoriously difficult one, so best not. Much as I’m glad that the writers haven’t retconned Katie’s death after all, this story does leave a sour taste in the mouth (so it does). Still, any excuse to have Jim back: I could watch Charlie Lawson read the dictionary (so I could). But good grief, Jim, where do you find a young woman that evil? Asking for a friend… (so I am).

Once again, though, I’ve got to gripe: the storylines are rushing by at the speed of light. This plot was announced months ago. People on the internet have been talking/moaning about it ever since. And yet you just know it will be over in a matter of weeks. The anticipation seems to last longer than the actual event does. (Now, there’s a Carry On line if ever I saw one…)

Why did Hannah and Jim go to the bother of faking a DNA test, exactly? If the deception was so poor that it took Steve and Tracy 20 minutes on the Internet to work out that she’s a fake… maybe Jim was just relying on Liz being so inept with technology she’d never think to Google her: going by that measure, it’d probably work on half of my family. Let’s be honest: this story is preposterous, even now we know that Hannah’s not Katie. Liz is no Miss Marple but surely the fact that Hannah manages to drag every single conversation they’ve had back to how desperately she needs money to pay for her treatment should tip her off. In her position, I’d be raising hell: instead, she’s shrugged her shoulders and said “oh well, better late than never, eh? At least we found each other eventually.” And for someone who believes that doctors can be inept enough to mix up a dead baby with a live one, she’s surprisingly willing to throw thousands of pounds at an experimental medical treatment.

Still, though. What’s the point of characters having money if they can’t be scammed out of it? Audrey (almost certainly), Jonny (imminently), Maria (probably), Carla (eventually), Ryan (inevitably). If I lived on the Street and suddenly came into money I’d be stashing it in one of those no-access-allowed ISAs before you could say tally-ho. And it still probably wouldn’t be enough. The Street’s full of hardened criminals right now: Ryan’s druggie mate (may he rest) and his dangerous dad; Josh the serial rapist; sneaky, slimy Jude; Jim the failed bank robber; and – perhaps most heinous of all – Maureen, perpetually lurking in the aisles of the corner shop, fixated on swindling Dev out of a few pence on out-of-date baked goods. Watch yourself, Corrie fans. Trust no-one.

By Stephen Leach, who is in Twitter @SirTerenceBoot

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