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It’s been another odd week in Coronation Street. It’s not just the social distancing that I’m trying to get my head around and heaven knows, I’m cutting them slack for that. I truly admire ITV for carrying on when other soaps have stopped filming during the pandemic. But I just wish, hand on heart, that things could be different.
Corrie has a quality team of writers – it’s the reason I love the show. They have some wonderful actors too, yet it all seems to be going to waste. We had a lengthy and tedious storyline about Steve and a sausage. On paper, this must have looked great. On screen, not so much. If only… if only instead of that nonsense we could have had a five minute phone call from Jenny to Rita, who’s locked down and isolating. Or Mary on a zoom call to mother. Even a few seconds of Dev stroking his new and rather luxurious beard (not a euphemism) would have been preferable to what we had to endure this week with the constant back and forth of Geoff, Sally, Tim, Geoff, Sally, Tim, Alya, Ryan, Geoff, Sally, Tim, well it’s almost too dire to bear.
So what DID I enjoy this week? Well, here goes…
I’m a big Gemma fan and anything involving her gets my vote. She sets up a vlog to talk to new mums about looking after her quads (Quad Vlog, you’re welcome). Chesney walks downstairs in his undies and appears on screen, he’s embarrassed but it prompts a large response to Gemma’s vlog. One response comes in from a woman who isn’t coping with her new child and Gemma reaches out. But it turns out to be nasty Vanessa who humiliated Gemma at the baby yoga class some months ago. Gemma forgives Vanessa and arranges to meet to talk, however Chesney tells Bernie who isn’t best pleased. Bernie storms off to give Vanessa a dressing-down, and Vanessa walks away shame-faced.
Also this week I loved seeing Sally coping with the covid crisis in her own way, by wearing a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves everywhere she went. It’s the little things like this that make the show for me. Sally and Tim are at odds over Geoff who’s really nasty to Sally when he thinks she’s in the house on her own. But when his granddaughter Faye overhears what he’s saying, he quickly backtracks and says he didn’t mean what he says. This was my highlight scene of the week, written by my favourite female writer Carmel Morgan. You can always expect something gritty and dark when Carmel’s name appears on the writing credits and this one didn’t disappoint.
Less enjoyable, sadly, were yet more shenanigans between Adam and Sarah and Gary and Maria, most of which I’ve lost track of, some of it involving Rick Neelan’s watch and nearly all of it involving Sarah in tears, torn between Adam and Gary. Gary prepares for his wedding to Maria but neither of them are sure they want to go through with it. Gary heads to see Sarah and pledges his love, while David overhears it all.
And in yet another ITV cross-promotion we saw another wasted storyline with the goddess who is Mary, wrapping herself up in a blanket that was covered by images of ITV presenter Ben Shepherd’s face.
In a nutshell, not the best of weeks for the world’s longest-running drama serial.
And that’s just about that for this week.
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This week’s writers were Cameron McAllister (Monday); Sam Holdsworth (Wednesday); Carmel Morgan (Friday). Find out all about the Coronation Street writing team at Coronation Street Blog: Exclusive: All Current Corrie writers online
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Glenda Young
Twitter: @Flaming_Nora
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