Coronation Street Season Finale

Imagine this. It’s every Corrie fan’s worst nightmare. Amidst the excitement of the 60^th anniversary, special programming in the run-up to the big day, cast interviews, parties on the set and an avalanche of special blogs from us Superfans, a big announcement is made.

December 9^th 2020 will be Coronation Street’s final every episode.

Nightmare.

But not unexpected.

The Coronavirus, which subsided during the summer months, has returned with a vengeance. Public transport is shut down, Parliament is in recess, schools are closed and the infection rate is still rocketing. All people want to do is self-isolate and watch Corrie.

STOP READING NOW, AUD

But that’s not the worst of it. 2020 started with hyped-up warnings of World War Three over tensions between Iran and the US. And although fragile peace agreements in Syria and Iraq are holding, the refugee crisis hitting Europe is causing economic turmoil and governments around the world are at odds over how to deal with the problem.

WEATHERFIELD 2021

A recently re-elected Donald Trump has taken Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flight to the Moon and decided to stay on account of it being “the Greatest Moon ever”.

Iran’s supreme leader has succumbed to the Covid-19 and the country is accusing the Americans of creating it in an act of chemical warfare. Meanwhile Kim Jong Un is threatening to nuke Japan from his mountain bunker, where he sits out the pandemic like a James Bond baddie, watching North Korea’s most popular TV soap – Kimmynation Street from his lair whilst binging on cheese and Pepsi.

The British military is put on war footing and rationing and stockpiling have begun in case the unimaginable happens.

ITV closes its studios in Salford and TV now mainly consists of news bulletins, government alerts and repeats of You’ve Been Framed (the Lisa Riley Years).

Coronation Street, which has already ceased filming, has seen the departure of many of its characters, particularly the younger ones. But the storylines yet to play out reflect the state of the country in real life. The whole Platt family moved to Italy after Audrey died of Coronavirus back in September. Craig, Gary, Ali and Ryan all went off to join the military. Bet Lynch retuned, moving into the Rovers where she now remains, bedridden, smoking fifty cigarettes a day, waiting to take her final breath in the place she loves so much. The Connors all fled to Ireland where the virus has been successfully eradicated. Claudia ran off with an American army general so Ken sold the retirement flat and moved back to Number One, where the whole family now live, rather uncomfortably. 

BROWN SAUCE & THE APOCALYPSE

Rita still makes her daily trip from the flat to the Rovers to drink bucketfuls of gin and reminisce over the last war. She sits every evening with the remaining Coronation Street residents and sings to them underneath the Union Jack which has been hung from the Rovers ceiling. Rita, Bet, Ken and others, keeping one another's spirits up in a kind of self-imposed red-brick quarantine.

DE-COBBLED WASTELASND

So Wednesday 9^th December, Coronation Street’s sixtieth birthday, arrives. That famous theme tune plays in households across the country. Comfortingly familiar in an uncertain world.

The episode starts and we’ve seen the first scene play out before. Children playing on the cobbles. A corner shop, it’s lights glow in the dark, poorly-lit street. We enter the shop. Dev is packing things into a box. He's shipping out. An unknown character is arranging jars into neat rows on a shelf.

“It’ll be funny having my name over my own shop” the newcomer says.

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Corrie will obviously outlive us all. But I wonder what story the final episode will tell when it does come. Most finales are disappointing and leave too many loose ends unresolved to satisfy every viewer (I’m still furious at how Star Trek Voyager ended).

We’ve seen in life and world events that history does repeat itself. I can imagine Corrie ending just as it started in 1960. An unremarkable working class back street that has seen many people come and go, but on the whole has stayed starkly the same. The same worries and struggles, the same ways of pulling together and getting through hard times as they had decades ago. The same three meals a day, same unfulfilling job, the same pint in the same chair at the same pub. Technology might have changed but working class life isn’t all that different.

So with all the apocalyptic headlines recently maybe the end of Corrie, and the world, isn’t too far away. But if it started all over again, honouring Tony Warren's original idea, it could start pretty close to how it all kicked off the first time round.

But with Twitter.

@StevieDawson 

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