Dion

I really hope they don't make Yusef a psycho either. There's so much potential for conflict (especially with Denise now becoming involved) in this situation that the writers shouldn't have to resort to making Yusef the bad guy. All four have enough baggage to make the story compelling and yet stay sympathetic characters without having to resort to making one person a villian.

Hope you don't mind me answering your question since it was directed at Ben but with Ken Barlow it's a case of Coronation Street having a huge cast (bigger than EastEnders actually) that he can become a supporting character for long periods of time (like what you describe with EE) plus I think marrying him off to Deirdre (who was a decade younger and had a young daughter) back in 1981 and then having her have an affair with Mike Baldwin was an inspired move as it provided years of conflict. As for Neighbours, I think Karl and Susan should consider fostering as it's kinda obvious that they are going to continue taking in waifs and strays (although this would unfortunately mean more teens). Perhaps their foster child could be a really bad troublemaker (i'm talking arson,drunk driving etc etc, most kids on Neighbours are far too nice, even Andrew settled down a bit too quickly, and there needs to be someone to provide a total contrast), whatever the case it should be something that would provide lots of conflict for the Kennedy's. Lyn should be alright as she's got Summer and eventually will have Oscar and Charlie when they grow up. I hated it when they had her have an affair with Paul in 2006, but now I'm glad they did as her feud with Paul is quite interesting.

They took mine.

It's funny but it never once occurred to me that Janine and Ricky might still have relatives on their mother's side.

Haven't been watching Shortland Street lately (Show's boring at the mo) but was surprised to find out that the Nicole/Maia/Jennifer plot has already been wrapped up and Maia and Jennifer have left the show (seperately). Seems Jennifer quit the hospital when her affair with Maia was exposed and Maia decided to leave a week later when her mother Yvonne got offered a new job. Nicole remains on the show but as she is Bi I suspect she'll just be paired with men for a while.

I do like most of your ideas, though there's something you'd have to change and that's Sally's father as he died in 1989 and even if he was alive he was also a wife beater (and Rita knowing the family history would never go for that). It's an easy problem to fix though, just have Sally find an old unsent letter stuffed away in her mother's possesions which details an affair she had leading to Sally's conception...Sally tracks him down and the rest plays out how you describe... My favourite is the Rosie idea...I'd actually go even further and have Rosie undergo a hymenorrhaphy but I think that subject's a bit too post-watershed for corrie! I do think however that the suggestion for Emily doesn't really fit the character. Emily's always been the rational type of Christian who never gets carried away with her religion. If she started hearing voices, she'd more than likely dismiss them as her imagination rather than the voice of God. I think the story idea would have been perfect for Ivy Tilsley though.

Not quite the same as an umbrella storyline with everybody involved but what did you think of that storyline where a bunch of characters (Cricket, Nina, Danny, Neil and I think Nathan and Paul) had to go rescue Dru from a porn studio?

Yes I'd already seen that clip and quite liked the chemistry between Barbara Knox and Phillip Lowrie.

There's still Ken and even Rita (afterall, Rita was actually introduced as an old friend of Dennis' in her 1964 guest stint) and Emily too (though I don't know if Emily and Dennis ever interacted much). They could even make him and Eileen long lost cousins! (after all since Grimshaw was Elsie's maiden name there was a lot of speculation made in 2000 about a possible link between Eileen and the Tanners when it was announced that Eileen was to move into No.11 with her two sons, though that turned out to be the newspapers once again blowing things out of proportion!). It would be nice if Dennis has been in touch with Jed Stone and tells the others that Jed has got his life in order (I was not happy with the way Jed's last stint ended) or even better, they could bring Jed back too, though I don't see that happening.

Well Neighbours has just got a little bit more interesting with the revealation that (Spoiler tags because I know most here are at UK pace) Although admittedly the set up for this is far from perfect (it does feel like something the writers just pulled out of thin air) I think it does have the potential to be a great storyline.

True...although it does mean that once again Maia's attracted to someone who may not be totally confident in their sexuality (Jennifer has only dated men up until now and is also recently divorced, though to be fair she only joined in September and it's clear that she's never felt any spark in any of her relationships with men, including her marriage). Maia's partner Nicole is bisexual, but Maia was her first relationship with a woman as well (though unlike Jennifer, Nicole has always known that she was Bi but she just hadn't met the right woman yet).

Shortland Street's back for 2011 and at the moment it seems Maia's about to cheat on her partner Nicole with the relatively new Doctor, Jennifer. Should be sure to stir up some controversy.

Apparently Sonia's father was a man named Terry Cant. When it came out about David being Bianca's father, the other kids wanted to know about their fathers. Apparently Robbie's father used her money to buy toys to get 13 year olds into bed (At the time it was a bit of a throwaway line and wasn't explored. I don't know if this was brought up again when Robbie's father actually came on the show - but it is known that he left Carol when he got someone else pregnant as Robbie has a half brother named Kevin. Perhaps Carol was exaggerating and their was only one 13 year old and that was Kevin's mother.) and Sonia's father Terry beat Carol up. I don't see Carol as the type to stay in an abusive relationship for very long, i'd be willing to bet she up and left with the kids the second the first beating occurred and didn't find out she was pregnant with Sonia until later.

Not really when you think about it. Ian and Mel's wedding was really the first wedding that Michelle conceivably would have bothered to come back for (it's not like she had much to do with Ricky and Bianca for example). Plus, Michelle wasn't to know that the union would last all of twenty minutes! Plus it would have been an opportunity for Michelle to make an appearance at the turn of the millennium and also be an early 15th anniversary guest return.

Friday's ratings were: EP1: 256,000 EP2: 288,000 Weekly average: 266,200 Good to see that the second friday episode was the highest rated of the week! Who knows, once the floods in Queensland are all sorted out and January ends figures may rise over 300,000. Also, thursday's figures showed that Melbourne made up almost half of the show's audience, indicating a bit of local support.

Yeah she's checked herself in suffering from exhaustion. I hope she gets well soon. Ratings seem to be doing quite well, it seems to have lost only half of it's audience from Ten The results from the five capital cities were: Tuesday 254,000 Wednesday 274,000 Thursday 259,000 Two episodes have screened tonight in Australia so we'll have to see how that goes.

Hopefully they'll decide to do the two-hander when Bianca comes back

Jane actually had an emergency hysterectomy after Steven shot her (ie: her fertility problems aren't just the usual run of the mill can't conceive or have trouble carrying to term type thing that soaps usually go for so they can have the miracle pregnancy option still open to them) so unless Jane's uterus miraculously grows back (and that's one thing which you can be sure will never happen) they'll be writing around her pregnancy I imagine. I'd have Jane decide to leave Ian and Walford (Although that might be too close to what they did with Tanya) and then come back having (or at least appearing to on the surface) completely put her marriage behind her (aside from anything to do with the kids, Bobby especially). Jane needs to be separated from Ian for at least two to three years to give her a chance to develop at least some independence as a character. Long term Ian and Jane could get back together but in the meantime Ian could be paired off in a short term marriage to Mrs Ian Beale #5 (she could turn out to be psychotic or perhaps die tragically) or they could even keep him single (though I fear he'd just end up pining over Jane if he stayed single).

I never thought about it that way but yeah that's actually true. You can even go through various Sharon storylines and see which Mitchell sister it'd suit best eg: Sharon wants to go on the pill - Roxy The Banned - Roxy Sharon goes out with a Vicar - Ronnie Sharon's cheated on by Wicksy - Ronnie Sharon cheats on Grant with Phil - Roxy Sharon mourns Tom and later Dennis - Ronnie To analyse a bit further Roxy is early Sharon (1985 - 1995) while Ronnie is later Sharon (2001 - 2006). But while the Mitchell sister's seem doomed to stay in their prescribed roles as Fire (Roxy) and Ice (Ronnie), IMO Sharon actually more or less evolved from fire to ice (and then started thawing out again!) and yet always retained enough of both qualities to feel like a well-rounded character.

Wasn't it Marlon who helped Eric save Kathy from Graham? Biff was already gone by that point (one of the reasons he jilted Kathy was because he felt that she was more attracted to Graham than him and Kathy and Graham started a relationship after Biff left).

If they want Syed and Christian to be gay parents then Syed's already got a child with Amira that they could bring into the show to achieve that goal in a more realistic fashion - at this point it just feels rushed to have them go down the whole surrogacy route. And I'd much rather Roxy carry the child too (though they'd have to spend sometime building a Roxy and Syed relationship - be it friendship or at least a strong respect for each other). Jane and Ronnie's reaction would be quite interesting too. Jane seems to have calmed down after adopting Bobby but after having lost three babies (four if you include Tommy) I'd imagine Ronnie would be quite rankled to realise that even a gay couple are having a baby when it seems she can't - plus they're having said baby with her mother! Speaking of Jane though, I wonder if the real reason they've quietly wrapped up Jane's issues with babies and Lucy's abortion is because of the baby switch? Perhaps the writers felt it was too much to have two characters in separate storylines agonize over their lack of children.

On the surface of it, Ian turning out to be Bobby's father always seemed to be a bit odd to me as Ian had just received the results of his first sperm test (and they were clear) when he resumed having sex with Laura (I think he faked a bad back for several weeks to avoid sex before that as like Jane, Laura also had baby rabies). So when Laura turned up pregnant it seemed that it couldn't possibly be Ian's (and only a few weeks before discovering she was pregnant Laura had had a convenient ONS with a mystery man that later turned out to be Garry). Of course when Bobby was born and Laura found out that both she and Garry did not match the baby's blood type, she was told there was a chance that it could be Ian's and a year later when Ian finally found out about being listed as Bobby's father on the birth certificate, he went to a clinic and they told him he should've waited a bit longer and then had a second test just to make absolutely sure. While this is certainly plausible its also somewhat contrived and everything always seemed to fit better with Garry as the father so it makes me wonder if the writers decided to change direction with that story mid-stream or whether Ian was always planned to turn out to be the father and the execution was just clumsy. The show was transitioning at the time so both scenarios were likely.

I'm not actually too bothered by the suddenness of Marcus returning to marry Sean, after-all the show has a bit of a tradition of rushing characters to the altar (Ken and Val after the 1961 strike, Ray and Deirdre when Billy Walker abruptly quit, Alf and Audrey when Audrey became a regular and Derek and Mavis when Derek became a regular) and for those couples it actually worked out in the long run. However since it seems that this is somewhat of a political statement I'm thinking within a month Marcus will cheat on Sean with James and then leave the street with both of them broken-hearted and blaming each other leading to a rivalry where they both fight over men who aren't really bothered with the both of them for a few years to come. Or perhaps they want Sean married and settled so they can focus on James as a single. Sean's never really worked as a single himself (probably because with the exception of Marcus Sean's romances have gone down the same cliched path with Sean being interested in someone who is not really interested in him or is interested in someone else - Michelle and Jason) so marrying him off into a double act might actually work out.

Thanks for the compliment Carl I would post more, but in New Zealand we are still seeing episodes from August last year which makes it hard to post. Thanks also for the link, as the documentary was quite interesting, although the presenter's delivery was quite stilted!

The new set should be quite an exciting development (7.7 acres! ) and its fun to speculate on what will change and what will stay the same. I'm thinking Coronation Street itself won't change that much although the Corner Shop and the Kabin would hopefully be slightly different taking into account what happened in the Tram crash. Also perhaps the Rover's street frontage could be widened a bit so it matches the size of the interior sets better. There's really be no need to retain the Rosamund Street Viaduct as it's only there to hide the Granada Television buildings and it's obvious that it doesn't continue behind the terraced houses. Of course for continuity purposes you could have it in the new set and just acknowledge it onscreen and explain it away as being a remnant of an old railway viaduct that was mostly pulled down when Coronation Street was built in 1902 (a bit like Weatherfield's version of the High Line in New York City lol). They could open up the viaduct again and have a Jubilee Terrace facade on the other side as part of the set...although extending the set that far might be getting a bit too far west (I assume its west, since the Terraces are north and Underworld is south) from the Rovers and you'd really want the Rovers to be roughly in the geographical centre of the new set Other options include having more generic locations such as street frontages (another terrace facade and/or a small street with facades of semi-detached houses) to use to cut down on location costs or a park area to represent the famous Red Rec.