My Corrie : A Week In Review. Am I Missing Something?

It's been a while, but fired by this week's X echo chamber of #Corrie negativity I felt compelled to look at the quality of this week's #Corrie and write about it. I don't like negativity, and I wondered, what with this week's X online storm, am I missing something?

 

Watching this week's episodes, I decided to list some of my favourite bits here: 

1. Plenty of Mary Taylor - Tracy's departure (I'll talk about that below) led to much screen time for one of my absolute Corrie favourites this week. Although a rather unbelievable pairing Mary and Tracy's flower shop friendship worked. Mary is entertaining, wonderfully written, and eccentric. Love her!

2. The Rovers takes centre stage - the closure hit hard, but I love the refurb. This week our favourite watering hole was centre stage of Corrie's drama and back to its former glory. With glamorous Glenda and gorgeous Jenny, Daisy adds a devilish air of beauty and an equally acidic tone to this latest barmaid line-up. Daisy's bitchy diatribes with Bethany hark back to the glory days of Ena and Elsie or Gail and Eileen. Mary's mad harping over the last-orders bell was also comedy gold -even Tracy's sudden departure managed a Rovers Return celebration. The dinner party raised online questions about the new kitchen, but I love anything like that. It's a fictional TV show!!! It's like when people complain about Doctor Who regenerating! Carla learning about her pub ownership can only be a good thing. I'll drink to that! Ps - more Karaoke, speed dating and weekly quizzes, please!

3. Audrey's Salon is back - I can't say I'm a fan of Maria's parental paranoia (although I understand it) but, at least we got the hairdresser's back. I'd guess Trim Up North was a pandemic victim, Corrie's bosses realising that one hairdresser's shop is more than enough? I've missed the days of random extras getting a trim whilst earwigging the latest gossip. Great stuff!

4. Tracy's departure - I *think* this is a red herring. She'll return in a few months -  a) heartbroken, b) pregnant, or c) with an insufferable "issue". I hope she returns, at the very least, as Kate Ford (as Tracy Barlow) is an absolute Corrie legend. When she does return, Steve will be coupled up and Tracy's return will put a cat amongst the pigeons. 

I don't usually, but if I had to mention some negatives, I'd write them here:

1. Cropper's Crime Caper- No, no, no & no again. Roy's weird worldly wiseness, innocence and eccentricities mark him as a classic Corrie character and one I would align closely with the show's values & history. This is what the X mob may have been annoyed by! Unneeded. I hope that when this story concludes, it's justifiable, and Roy will be exonerated. 

 ...

Am I missing something - is Corrie on its last legs? No, I don't think it is, it may just be there's a lot of darkness on the show at present and more comedy is needed, That's it. 

It's been a while since I've written about Coronation Street, but this week's schedule change gave me the time to write about it!  I enjoyed that! 

Maybe I'll do a weekly review next week? Let me know what you think. 

I am @rybazoxo on X  - Corrie superfan.

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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.

***

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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Corrie Comedy Cuts

My latest classic Corrie comedy moment comes from 1979. It’s a scene in the Rovers focussed around Fred Gee’s new wig. He’s roundly mocked for the less than flattering hairpiece by Annie Walker and several of the punters. There’s also a wonderful side show of Rita and Mavis who are propping up the bar, and bickering as always. It’s yet another example of Classic Coronation Street being more like a sitcom than a drama.

To celebrate sixty years of Corrie I’m sharing the scenes and moments that have made me laugh the most.

This clip was uploaded to YouTube by @LewisPringle and Tweeted recently by @ArchiveTVmus71.

Enjoy.

@StevieDawson

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How to build your own Rovers Return - in six hours flat

Now, I'm not at all sure what this is and why it was built, but it's quite an interesting short video to watch.

It looks as if this copy of the Rovers Return from Coronation Street was built for some promotion type of thing, in London. 

Enjoy it as it goes up in front of your very eyes, as the actress might have said to the vicar.

This week’s #throwbackthursday is when Corrie came to London

Verve Display were commissioned to build the iconic Rovers Return Inn from Coronation Street, fully working and real in EVERY way.

From render to creation in less than a week and only 6 hours to build and install. pic.twitter.com/wJKg8pzYyt

— Verve Display Ltd (@VerveDisplayLtd) June 6, 2019

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Glenda Young

Novelist with Headline

Twitter: @Flaming_Nora

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All original work on Coronation Street Blog is covered by a Creative Commons License