Act your little heart out. I'm going to shock you now, but the people on Coronation Street aren't real. I know, it was a surprise to me too, but I learned the truth the hard way when I tried to assault Richard Hillman in the pet food aisle of Altrincham Morrisons. The subsequent trial taught me that these are in fact actors, people who like to express human emotions for money, though this is easy to forget when you see more of them in an average week than most of your own family.
Often Corrie becomes a kind of exposition machine. Person rushes into shot, they reveal something shocking, the other person reacts, they storm out in a huff. Next scene, next plot, keep moving. It doesn't have time to let things land. Except on Monday, when the entire first half of the second episode was devoted to Fiz and Tyrone, and it was fantastic. I have had no time for this awful Alina storyline over the last few weeks but it's almost been worth it because it produced this two hander.
Alan Halsall and Jennie McAlpine took the script, worked with it, and actually acted. When they had room to breathe and think, they produced compelling drama simply from two people talking. They were thoughtful, they ran through emotions from shame to anger to regret - they took Ian Kershaw's script and turned it into a tight, fascinating scene. You don't need gimmicks, you don't need explosions, you don't need psychopaths trying to dangle babies off bridges. Put characters and actors together and let them do their jobs with a well-written script and that's more than enough. Monday's scene managed to actually make me invested in what happens to the Dobbs-Stape family, and hope that they make it through. (I reserve the right to start hating it again if Tyrone continues sniffing round Alina though).
Don't clap, she doesn't deserve it. Leanne needed a disguise so she robbed Aggie's nurse's uniform. I'm really curious about her thought process here; did she know it was hanging out to dry? Was it premeditated? Or did she just nip down the ginnel in the hope that she'd find something worth having? I'm mainly interested to know what she would've done if the uniform hadn't been there. Would she be going to drug drops in James's football kit? Or Kevin's bomber jacket? I'm now imagining her loitering in a back alley wearing one of Gemma's low cut spangly boob harnesses. She'd have looked even more like a prostitute then. (Can we take a moment to appreciate the hilarity of Simon simply sighing "are you back on the game again?" at his mum? He was so casual about it. Oh look, my mum's gone back to being a sex worker, guess I'm making my own tea tonight).
Incidentally, Wethy Gazette, it's a tram STOP, not a tram STATION. Although I can see why you'd be confused, what with Weatherfield North having two manned ticket windows, even though that's not a thing they do on Metrolink. No, I will never let that go.
Before the comments are filled with gay viewers telling me that actually they spend their weekends watching the football and scratching themselves and they've never listened to a Kylie album in their life, no, I'm not saying that every homosexual character has to be a flaming ball of rainbows. I'm saying that the dialogue between Paul and Todd and Jimmi called for a certain kind of gay banter that just wasn't there, and they should've perhaps employed a Queer Consultant to advise the actors on that particular scene.
Ain't no valley low enough. Daisy continued her project to be the most unpleasant human being on Planet Earth this week by joining up with Sean to con people out of their savings. "I kind of like ripping people off" she gleefully announced, a sentence that would only be uttered by an actual psychopath. Any normal person would've backed away slowly, possibly while making a crucifix with some bar mats, but Sean is so in love with the idea of making money he immediately took her on board as a co-worker. He tried to get a bit of sympathy from Eileen by confessing that he spends his nights worrying he's going to end up under a viaduct again; he then immediately started spending cash he didn't have which is exactly how he ended up homeless the first time round so it's clear he's learned absolutely nothing. (Do you think Carol, his homeless friend who provided assistance for him while he was on the streets, turns up in those nightmares? Or do you think he's entirely scrubbed her from his mind?) Sean is apparently taking an apartment in the Redbank development. I'm sure Adam and Sarah-Lou will be thrilled to learn he's their new neighbour, and won't worry that his arrival has knocked ten grand off the value of their flat.
That was all a bit serious, wasn't it? Sorry. If you're missing all the usual innuendos and jokes about people's hair, follow my Twitter account @merseytart, because that's pretty much all it is.
