Hello. My name is Beverley Crevasse, and I play the hole in David Platt's back garden. You thought that was made using a digger? Oh no. Equity rules demand that any onscreen pits must be played by a union actress, and I have years of experience. I was the grave Jennifer Saunders fell into in Absolutely Fabulous, for example, and I spent much of 2010 jammed full of Silurians. So I was delighted to get a phone call inviting me to appear on the nation's favourite soap opera. Since I was appearing in the back garden of the Platts, and a sinkhole is obviously a significant event, I assumed the part would be fairly large, and I was very happy to appear throughout one episode. However, I've not returned to the set since. The following week I was talked about, but not seen, and in this week's episodes none of the residents of number 8 appeared and absolutely nobody on the Street discussed me. I'm turning to you, as Coronation Street fans, to give me some insight into my continuing role. Have I been sorted? Have I been filled in? Is there at least a nice bit of hazard tape surrounding me to stop small children falling in? Nobody seems to want to tell me, and I can't just wait by the phone forever. They're doing a remake of Alice in Wonderland and I'd quite like to be the rabbit hole, but I can't take on another part if I'm still needed on Corrie. I seriously hope that my character gets some proper resolution and isn't just forgotten about because that would be terrible all round.
I also loved this very carefully framed shot. If you're not familiar with the layout of Salford Quays, if the camera had lifted up about six inches, you'd have seen the metal shard of the Imperial War Museum North poking over the top. Don't hold your breath for another tram coming off the top of that viaduct - the cost of the CGI would bankrupt Granada.
Lenny is BACK! I think it says a lot about the difference between Corrie in the 90s and today that when Vera hired a private detective to find her grandson she considered selling her car to pay for it, while in 2020 Lenny is basically a permanent member of the cast. It's not all bad, because Alexander Kirk gives a great, quirky performance, but still, everyone on the Street seems to have a lot of cash to throw at private investigators at the drop of a hat. Worse, this week he brought the news that Todd is mixed up with criminals and gangsters. There went any hope I had that NuTodd might be something like the pleasing, clever boy he was when he first appeared on the show, rather than the vortex of spite he returned as. I'm sure I'll have my mind changed when he finally appears; after all, this show has a great track record when it comes to villainous gangsters. Who can forget that family of drug dealers who terrorised Ryan and Ali? They were great, weren't they?
It was also nice to see Eileen, quarantined in the Far East, and definitely not in Sue Cleaver's local Thai restaurant. Just out of shot is her takeaway pandan chicken and beef panang.
Eat Out To Help Out. Nicky followed Government advice and decided to keep Pret going, turning up at Daniel's with a selection of takeaway sandwiches. She picked some unbelievably boring fillings though - cheese and pickle in 2020? It couldn't compare with Debbie Webster getting a hummus, jalapeno and rocket bap from Roy's; they really have expanded their menu since Nina took over, haven't they? Anyway, the seductive power of a good bin lid was too much and soon Nicky and Daniel were in bed together because - sigh - it seems she really does like him after all. Quick reminder that they met when he hired her to dress up as his dead wife; that's the behaviour of a man with serious psychological issues and certainly not the kind of person to make you all heart eyes emoji. Daniel's issues have completely changed the way I see him. Gone is the sensitive bookish nerd, in comes Fred West.
This dressmaker's dummy in the background has stopped being an eccentric piece of interior design and has instead taken on sinister overtones. I'm reminded of the one Buffalo Bill had in his basement which he used to sew his suit of women's skin. Daniel also laid into Geoff for using sex workers and for kidding himself that they liked spending time with him, a rant that might have had some substance if that wasn't exactly what Daniel did. Just because you didn't actually have sex with her it doesn't make you some innocent. You still paid a human being to fulfil your own personal wants and desires with no regard for her as a person. Nicky should be running a mile, a fact that was underlined when, after their afternoon delight, Daniel returned to his habit of phoning her over and over again like a stalker. Take that money, take Chrissie Rogers, and run far and fast. This whole storyline is annoying and rubbish and adding in another hospital visit and another robbery doesn't make it any better.
A leopard can change its spots. Have you noticed that Tracy Barlow is, well, nice now? She seems to have embraced Emma as another daughter, she spends hours at the hospital with Steve, and she is generally supportive and caring. This is what middle-age does for you, I suppose. Fortunately she's not entirely soft, and seems to be the only one with a level head around Oliver's treatment. Tracy was the only person to enquire what exactly they planned on living on once they'd sold all their worldly possessions to pay for his trip to Germany; she didn't quite use the phrase "throwing good money after bad" but we could tell she was thinking it. And she still has an acid tongue underneath, as evidenced by her banter with Jenny Bradley about the members of Eternal (Jenny bummed a tampon off Vernie at the Hacienda!). When she was reminded that they were at Wethy Comp at the same time, she responded "were you one of the dinner ladies?", although in fairness to Trace, she had a different head then so she's probably having trouble remembering. Tracy really couldn't go any further down the EVIL route - she's still an actual murderer, don't forget - so softening her edges and making her a cynical but adorable character feels absolutely right.
This week's blog is a day late because the show was so terrible this week I struggled to think of five things I wanted to say about it. If you want to hear my opinions on Brian and Mary's flower debates, Abi and Peter's secret rendezvous, or Michael and Toyah holding a businessman hostage, contact me on Twitter @merseytart. Warning: it may contain adult language.
Great post, as usual.
ReplyDeleteI get the impression that the Corrie team (not just the writers) have lost their way, really. I know it must have been difficult keeping it going, but the plot lines(or a plot hole, if in The Platt's garden) seem all over the place.
Eileen's supposed to be stuck in Thailand. I guess it's pretty hot out there,so why heck is she wrapped up, cosy in a cardi?
Ray is probably going to buy the kebab shop and David's house, but why can't Debbie Webster buy them instead? It'd give her summat to do other than poke her nose in Kev's romance. It's time she found a love interest of her own - then Kev can poke his nose into her relationship!
What's happened to that Scott fella? one minute he's joking with Johnny, the next (like Beth) he's disappeared.
I'm fed- up of the constant musings about Todd, and the novelty of the Nicky and Daniel romance is wearing thin. Now she's be given a ton of loot, she seems to have pushed off, now!
It was nice to have a break from the sad Oliver story, anyway.
Yet again the factory has more social visitors than employees (who never do any work).
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to feel sympathy for Nicky - not every young single mother turns to prostitution, most get normal jobs!
Agree coconno196, it's hard to feel sympathy, especially when she earns £150 an hour! Even if she only worked Monday to Friday, that's still at least £750 a week. What kind of debts has she got!
ReplyDeleteEspecially love the part about the sinkhole. What were they thinking when they wrote this nonsense. How did anyone create a hole like that without anyone noticing? Was it along the lines of Andy in Shawshank Redemption? Someone would sneak into the garden at night and remove a little more soil, then replace the turf again?
I was wondering about that sinkhole too. I might have bought there being an abandoned well that was carelessly capped and someone finding a way to make it cave in but how can you cause a sinkhole and why wouldn't the entire neighborhood be closed down by the city for a thorough investigation? Where there's one sinkhole, there are likely many others because why would the soil be unstable in just one tiny yard? Everyone in the neighborhood would be considered in danger until geologists figured out this was a hoax, told David to fill the hole and forget it.
DeleteIt’s weird, isn’t it? How Corrie can have so much going on and so little at the time? Despite having an obscene amount of storylines on the go, 99% of the scenes this week were filler. The attempts at humour failed miserably; Toyah and Michael in the factory, Mary and Brian arguing about Cornflower, and Fizz and Tyrone’s bake-off. Who wrote this stuff? Ten-year-olds?! This was not the kind of humour Corrie is known for… it was embarrassing… I actually considered switching off… and still might if things don’t improve soon.
ReplyDeleteOne storyline that really annoyed me this week was Daniel’s. I think we can all agree that Daniel spending money he doesn’t have on a sex worker to dress up as his dead wife isn’t normal, healthy behaviour. But instead of acknowledging how creepy Daniel’s behaviour is, Corrie is romanticising it! They’re normalising it by making him Nicky’s saviour when I never once got the impression that Nicky wanted or needed saving. Not all women become sex workers out of desperation. Some see it as just another job and a way to make a lot of money. And Nicky was one of these women. Or at least she was until they gave her the cliched backstory of being a desperate single mother riddled with debt. The story jumps from Psycho to Pretty Woman as Nicky reveals she’s fallen for Daniel. She’s even started to ‘dream again’ since meeting him apparently. Dream? Are you sure you don’t mean nightmares? What does she find so endearing about him anyway? He’s a boring bookworm who bangs on about his son and makes her dress up in his dead wife’s cardigans for God’s sake! Yeah, a real catch! Hope this story wraps up soon. It’s achieved nothing other than putting me off Daniel. I used to really like him. Now he’s insufferable. It’s a shame because Rob Mallard’s a great actor.
The one bit I did enjoy this week was Carla and Peter’s showdown. We saw flickers of the old feisty Carla when she laid into Peter about his obsession with broken women and needing to be everybody’s saviour (The hero complex must run in the Barlow family). I thought all the references to the past (aka Frank Foster) were a nice touch. Another reason I liked this showdown is because it felt true to character. Carla’s always going to have trouble trusting Peter given his past affair - an affair, let’s not forget, that led to a young woman being murdered, Carla losing her baby, and her brother being thrown in prison (something which Carla and Peter never seem to mention, funnily enough).
Carla might’ve been harsh in her delivery, but she absolutely had Peter banged to rights. He couldn’t handle it though, and in the heat of the moment ended up making a flippant remark about Carla ‘sleeping’ with Jordan. Given Carla’s mental state at the time, what happened to her was rape, no question, and Peter moronically throwing it back in her face had me slapping my forehead in despair.
I’m not saying the Peter/Carla/Abi plot is perfect by any means, but these particular scenes were explosive and well-acted. It’s just a shame the rest of the week was so unforgivably awful.
Forget the sinkhole the Platt's backyard, I think the show's fallen down a sinkhole!
Anon at 16.35, I completely agree with ALL of your comments. I am also finding Daniel completely insufferable. He needs to get a life, stop paying Nicky hundreds of pounds.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why Nicky is interested in Daniel (aside from the money aspect) he is boring, lives in a dump and all he talks about his toddler son, he doesn't appear to have any friends at all. He is hardly a catch for any woman.
The show was the worst it’s ever been this week (and that’s saying something when last week had Shona 2.0 and the sinkhole!).
ReplyDeleteIf someone asked me to describe the state of Corrie right now, I’d describe it as a bike with its wheels coming off, hurtling off a cliff. Or one of those braindead Zombies off The Walking Dead, limping on the road side, just waiting to be put out of its misery.
In a nutshell, things are bad. Really bad. Which is not what you want when you’ve got a landmark anniversary fastly approaching.
So where’s it all gone wrong?
One of the major problems with the show at the moment is that there are too many storylines happening all at once and the show’s finding it impossible to juggle them all. Gary sabotaged the roof over a year ago and still is no closer to being caught! Geoff and Yasmeen’s story has shamefully petered out to the point where poor Yasmeen’s become a side character in her own story! Johnny’s mysterious friend Scott has disappeared without a trace. Kevin’s annoying sister is back for no reason at all. And now there’s a giant sinkhole that nobody’s talking about and baddie Ray (who’s been dormant for a year) seems to be behind it (because orchestrating sinkholes is totally a thing didn’t you know).
It’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it?
Corrie needs to start wrapping up some of these stories before introducing more into the mix because what we’re left with is a convoluted, confusing mess of a show that’s impossible to keep track of.
The humour this week missed the mark by about a mile. The Toyah and Michael scenes in the factory had my toes curling. Who do the writers think watches this show? Three-year olds?
We want more light-hearted, happy, uplifting moments, not panto slapstick fart jokes!
Instead of all the filler content we got this week, how about dedicating some scenes to character development? We could’ve had some scenes of Jenny and Johnny who I swear never appear onscreen together anymore. It’s like a magic trick they have where one of them shows up the minute the other disappears!
The overall point I’m trying to make here is the show’s become so farfetched, so devoid of logic, that it’s losing the realism it needs to keep itself grounded and believable. The continuity’s all over the shop and there’s no consistency to the storytelling anymore. I’ve lost track of who lives where, who works where, who’s with who, and so forth. The factory’s become an enigma. Everybody works there but what they do exactly remains a mystery.
I’m struggling to care about any of the characters at this point because they all get so little screen time and investment. Most of them are cardboard cut outs anyway.
*Trying to stay positive* What did I like about this week?
Boy, that’s a tough one…
Carla reading Peter the riot act was pretty good, but I’m getting fed up with Corrie breaking up its couples without properly establishing them first. Case and point, Sarah and Adam. They got together in a blink of an eye and separated in a blink of an eye. Why should we care about these relationships if we only ever see the negative parts of them?
What else did I enjoy this week? Um, that’s about it. The rest was garbage.
I’m scared that if things carry on the way they are that Corrie’s going to become an irredeemable mess and I really don’t want to see this happen to one of my favourite shows.
At least your reviews remain as funny as ever, Scott.
Thank goodness, Scott. I thought you’d thrown in the towel and/or jumped in the sinkhole when you didn’t appear yesterday. All week I look forward to your observations....if they ever stop I’ll find a better way of spending 129 minutes a week.
ReplyDelete