Cosy crimes and gritty sagas by Corrie Blog editor Glenda, published by Headline. Click pic below!

Saturday 8 May 2021

Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week


You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.  How dare you, ITV.  HOW DARE YOU.  How dare you introduce Nina and Seb as a romantic couple.  How dare you give them lovely, sparkling dialogue.  How dare you make them adorable and wonderful.  How dare you do all this in full knowledge that Harry Visinoni had handed in his notice.  That's not fair.  Send him off in a taxi, put him on a tram, have him finally realise that he's not pushing middle age and therefore has no chance with Alina; don't make me care and root for his relationship with Nina then crack him on the back of the head.  That's just cruel.


So yes, Seb is dead and Nina is in the hospital. and none of this is acceptable.  Nothing bad should ever happen to Nina, ever.  Just as I don't want to see Mary dropped into a mincing machine or Jenny Bradley run over by a steamroller, Nina should float through life in a wondrous state, dropping sarcastic remarks and wise advice for the next sixty years until she retires to Capri with her supermodel wife.  I do not want to see her scrabbling for incriminating evidence while covered in blood.  This isn't fair, Corrie.


Eli, Eli... oh.  I'm sorry, but I can't take the threat from a boy called Eli seriously.  Were Malachi and Zachariah busy?  Was Jethro bringing in the harvest and couldn't help out?  I know older names are now the fashion, hence a lot of Harrys and Johns and Edwards, but Eli is so Old Testament it sounds like he should've been smiting passers by.  It would certainly explain that haircut.  Presumably when Eli finished stealing hot hatches he had to nip back to Pennsylvania for a good old fashioned barn raising with his Amish brethren.  


This means that Corey is left as the ringleader-slash-scumbag in chief, larking about on his XBox and gaslighting every teenage girl within a fifty yard radius.  I'm not sure how he's managing this given he's about as charming as a Komodo dragon with a personal freshness problem but hey, maybe he's imbued with an in-the-flesh charisma that fails to be conveyed onscreen.  Or maybe he picked up The Geoff Metcalfe Guide To Dominating Women in Yasmeen's yard sale.  


I knew he was a bad 'un the minute he rejected a seeded batch for a bog standard white loaf.  Do you know what that's going to do to your intestines, Corey?  You may as well swallow a load of chalk for all the nutritional good you'll get out of it.  I don't mind Corrie occasionally dipping into the world of the Street's youth - it's certainly an improvement on the days when Tracy Barlow did nothing but shout "rotten cowing tart" and then go into hospital with kidney failure - but if I wanted nothing but teens skulking in alleyways looking guilty I'd watch Hollyoaks.  Hopefully next week's episodes will have some more grown ups in them.


On the plus side this lady appears to be the only competent officer in the entirety of Weatherfield Police and so she might be arresting all the "perps" sooner rather than later.  For the love of God, don't get Craig on the case.  He'll wander around the Street telling people they're all making a fuss about nothing then arrest, I don't know, Bernie?  It must be her turn to be wrongfully imprisoned soon.


Party, party, party.  I'm not saying that standards have slipped for hen nights on Coronation Street but Abi's do in the bistro was rubbish.  Where was Tracy?  Where was Beth?  Where were the strippers and penis straws and handcuffs?  Four guests at the whole thing - not even a couple of non-speaking extras to nod in the background.  The high point for Coronation Street hen dos is, somewhat unbelievably, when Ivy Tilsley married Don Brennan and Bet Gilroy lead a conga round her front room; it is an absolute joy to watch and can be seen from 1:01:58 here.  Not even Sally Metcalfe looking shocked at a dirty board game can compete with Audrey Roberts and Phyllis Pearce doing the twist.


Meanwhile over on the stag do the boys were dressed as Kevin c.1987.  They sadly missed the essential truth of young Kevin Webster which was that he was hotter than the sun and instead concentrated on dressing like Bruce Grobbelaar.  I do like the way a lot of people who didn't know Kevin in the 80s are able to do uncanny impressions of him in the 80s; almost as if they've learned it through watching ITV3 repeats rather than anything real.


Wind them up and let them go.  Sometimes I wonder if the writers on this show even bother with a script.  Sometimes I think they simply write "David Neilson delivers an awesome monologue that is absolutely character appropriate and it tears at your heart", knowing full well that a brilliant actor knows his role so well he can improv something astonishing.  But then I realise that actors are nothing without great writing, and that Ian Kershaw wouldn't write a lengthy, emotional monologue if he didn't realise there was a wonderful actor available to deliver it.  And if you didn't cheer when Carla appeared to support him, I'm sorry, you're dead inside.


Meanwhile, Sally Carman was busy being incredible as a woman losing the last scintilla of good in her life.  Much like previous trainwrecks like Becky or Kylie I desperately want Abi to overcome her demons and succeed, and I'd kind of like her to have a storyline where, I don't know, she wins a couple of grand on the lottery, or she buys a nice dress and someone's put a "reduced" sticker on it, or she just has a good time for once.  I want her to have a couple of months where someone she loves isn't hospitalised or criminalised.  I really don't - and I don't know how hard I can emphasise this - I really don't want her to use Seb's death as an excuse to go back to being a drug addict.  Please have her try to cope with such a terrible loss with the help and love of her friends and family rather than jamming a needle in her arm.


Into each life some rain must fall.  Of course, no week of Corrie can be 100% pure compelling drama, and so Monday's episodes taught us to really, really appreciate the brilliance of Wednesday's and Friday's by continuing the interminable gangster drug plot.  If you haven't been keeping up, here is the format:
  1. Sharon turns up at the house of some person on the Street she has only the slightest connection to.
  2. Sharon steals their virtual address book and passes the info on to her criminal mates.
  3. Sharon skulks in the Street shouting into a mobile phone while a big bald thug pursues the target.
  4. Her target escapes with ease.
This has already happened twice and Sharon's only been back in the show a fortnight.  The Battersby-Tilsley-Barlows escaped the criminals, off to another safe house; as Warrington was too dodgy they're probably somewhere safer like Salford or Rosamund Street or the top of the Beetham Tower with a big neon sign on top saying "SAFE HOUSE".  Why don't they just ask Toyah where she stashed Eva that time she was giving birth?  Nobody could find her and it looked like she had a really nice bathroom.  Or alternatively they could go and live with one of Leanne's many relatives who are abroad but, no, let's instead rent an Air B&B off Deansgate and act surprised when all your neighbours turn up on the doorstep.  

No really, the author is distraught at Seb's death.  Send flowers and red wine to him via Twitter @merseytart.







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6 comments:

Secretary said...

dont like Sharon never did never will.. as for the one that had the babies.. never hear about them now... I prefer Corrie as it was in Ena's day.

dhvinyl said...

Priceless! Brilliant scripts inspire equally brilliant writing from you.

Anonymous said...

Corrie’s not been firing off all cylinders lately, but wow, last week was amazing! See, the show can deliver when it wants to! Great performances from everyone – really hard-hitting stuff!
The scene I found most harrowing was Roy recounting the attack and being left to hold Nina’s jewellery, not knowing if he’d ever get to give it back to her... :(
During Roy’s monologue when he was telling Nina how she was all he had, I did go, ‘But what about Carla, Roy?’ While technically she’s not blood-related, I very much see them as father and daughter, and I thought the show did too, but perhaps they’re trying to create some distance there to focus more on Roy and Nina’s relationship? Anyway, not a complaint or anything, just struck me as a little odd. I cheered when Carla turned up at the hospital though!
Poor Seb! Killing him off was the right move in order to do the story it was based on justice, but was sad to see him go.
Great week – now don’t spoil it by adding the Baileys, Peter and his daft blanket, cackling Sharon and her ‘detective skills’, PC Plonker, Johnny and the ginger cat, Garreh Windarse, or Gemma and the invisible quads!

Jo said...

Great blog as always! I am annoyed with Corrie writers, as they introduce these young kids and it is all very Hollyoaks. They're trying to entice and engage the younger viewers, but I don't think that's their target audience. We need more light and shade. More humour with excellent female characters like Evelyn and Mary to balance out the darker storylines (of which there are too many!). I was annoyed with the Nina and Seb storyline, as I was hoping that, for once, Corrie writers would give us a strong young couple, who are obviously in love and get them to marry and settle down in the street like Kevin and Sally did. Core couples like Jack and Vera and Hilda and Stan will be a thing of the past. Even Tyrone and Fiz have split up! As for the Bailey family... oh dear... they don't work. The male members are terrible actors.

Anonymous said...

Jeanie (anon): Great story--the actress who plays Nina is really good--she said she was giving it her all and you could really tell she was. And Roy, of course, and Seb too (Harry Visconi). I was never a big fan of Seb and thought i would be glad to see him go, but it turns out that was his story lines more than him--because he showed he could more than just angry or pouting! But I agree with this article--why kill Seb off? Two mothers losing their children on the street in the last 4 months--it's just too much tragedy, particularly when you think that statistically people are hardly likely to lose a child at age two, or age 20. Please just skip over the aftermath for Abi because I really don't want to see another mother struggling to deal with such a devastating loss and would not watch if we have to see Abi go through a similar grieving process as Leanne.

It would have been very easy to do this story without Seb's death--Nina could have been attacked at any time when she was out alone. Seb's presence added nothing really to the plot. And you can see it was tacked on at the last moment. He and Nina got together out of nowhere just two weeks ago or so, became love's young dream in a matterof seconds, and then Seb was killed out of the blue. Perhaps the actor indicated he wanted to go, or the producer didnt want to renew him for some reason.

Anonymous said...

His name is Harry Visinoni.
Of course Abi will grieve for the loss of Seb-he's her son. There would be loads of complaints on here is she she saying it's not normal for her not to mourn him.
I'm sure this storyline will be treated differently to Oliver's passing, so you've got to expect some sort of grief process by Abi, who is being expertly portrayed by Sally Carmen

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