Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

The vultures are gathering.  Have you seen Death on the Nile?  (If you haven't, SPOILERS for a forty-one year old film based on an eighty-two year old novel).  Jane Birkin is a maid on the boat who spots the murderer, and then uses the information to try and blackmail some cash out of them.  Of course she spends all her time acting suspiciously and loudly talking about how "IF she knew things..." so there's a good load of motive for when she eventually gets her throat cut.  I was reminded of her this week as Natalie clattered round the Street winding up every member of the Platt family, almost revealing the theft of Audrey's money after a couple of vodkas in front of David and Nicky and making Shona simmer at the side of the room.  It made me wonder if she's about to suffer a terrible accident with all the Platts as suspects - there's still a few weeks for her to annoy Gail and Sarah-Lou after all.  I sincerely hope not, because as I said a couple of months ago when Rana was crushed, this programme has a nasty habit of killing off young, pretty women, and it'd be nice for one of them to get away unscathed.

The writers are hip to the young people of today.  With GoLucky robbing their customers, StreetCars was in financial trouble.  (Incidentally, didn't we just have a storyline where one of the men on the Street hid his business's dire financial straits from his partner?)  Steve and Tim decided to drag the cab company into the 21st century and enlisted Jay to create an app for them.  Jay, it turned out, was every single possible cliche about the youth of today wrapped up in one person, a kind of Milennial Snapchat Tumblr human being who spoke exclusively in terms the writers had looked up on the Urban Dictionary.  It was as if one of those YouTube influencers who say "HEY GUYS!" a lot had crawled out of the computer and invaded proper telly and it made my teeth itch.  This is his dialogue in a single scene:

NO.

NO AGAIN.

STOP IT.

GO AWAY.

ARGH.

FETCH ME A GUN.

Tim and Steve were absolutely confused throughout, which is weird because they are both fathers of teenage girls, and are therefore far more connected to the youth of today than most men in their forties.  Fortunately Tracy turned up at the cab office and demolished the little twerp with only a couple of well-placed barbs, proving once and for all that Gen X is the best of all generations.  (Yes, Tracy and I are the same age, what's your point?)

That remake of The Ring looks terrifying.  Roy watched a video tape in his hotel room in Portsmouth and then, seven days later, Sadako came calling for him in his flat.  Oh no, wait, my mistake; it's Carla without access to Herbal Essences.  Still, judging by the state she left that hotel room in, she's pretty devilish herself.  My favourite detail was the revelation that she was robbing all the newspapers from the corridor in the hotel.  They implied it was because of her fragile mental state, but I think she's just that keen on cryptic crosswords.

Ho, ho, ho, it's magic!  There was no doubt that Geoff would win Rovers Got Talent, what with him being the only one with an actual act.  Yes, the man doing photocopier impressions was interesting, but the less said about Kirk's knicker stuffing song the better, and God only knows how long the audience were sat there watching Maureen Lipman painting her Cubist masterpiece.  I've seen her on Celebrity Portrait Artist of the Year; I know that sort of thing takes hours.  I was mainly wondering where exactly she produced an easel and canvas from - it's hard to imagine her stowing that in the back yard at number nine.  As usual, Emma was the high point, enthusiastically embracing the role of magician's assistant due to a thrilling childhood experience watching Paul Daniels and The Lovely Debbie McGee's "Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow" Tour.  With any luck, like The Lovely Debbie McGee, she'll step out of the shadow of the magician and embrace the spotlight herself.  It should also be noted that Sean wasn't wearing that outfit for showbiz reasons: that was how he'd actually decided to dress for a night's work in a pub.

Trim Up North is still a work in progress.  With just one stylist and a trainee, the barber shop isn't exactly in rude health at the moment, not least because they're closing every five minutes so David can nip to the pub or the cafe.  It doesn't help that the only people who seem to want haircuts in there are people who've hardly got any hair in the first place - you can't make much money by whizzing a number 3 over Kirk's bonce for five minutes.  David needs to start offering his services to other residents, because goodness knows there are a few men on the Street who need his expert guidance.

Ken's hair is magnificent for a man of his age, of course, but he's had that style since the first Wilson government.  Under expert Platt supervision he could experiment with something a little more exciting.  Can I suggest a perm?

Meanwhile Adam has returned from Italy looking like he's been working on a chain gang in the Deep South.  An intervention is absolutely necessary, because if he's left to his own devices, things can go disastrously wrong:

Yikes.  

The greatest hair challenge is naturally Seb, who's currently mixing his handyman work with touring the provinces as the lead in Hair; not so much the dawning of the age of Aquarius, more the age of Aqua-net.    Give him 50% off, a free shave, unlimited shampoo, anything: please, David, just get rid of that mop.

A couple of weeks ago, @merseytart noticed that Ken had a brass monkey pointing its backside directly at a photo of his late wife.  This week, that monkey was safely stowed behind the picture.  Who says this is just a snidey little waste of time and doesn't have any influence on the show?  Oh everyone?  Harsh.

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