The beginning of the Asian Quarter storyline.

Robin's first appearance.  

Josh Clayton is murdered. 

This must be during the tailend of Gloria Monty's disastrous second run. A year early i stopped watching GH. I switch over to GL. The Tracy/Paul/Jenny/Ned quad isn't bad. There's no real differences between Bill and Luke LOL. Nikki Langton had potential. It's a shame that Nikki's half sister Dawn was killed off.  Seeing a sibling rivalry develop  between the sisters would've been interesting. As Monica is caught in the middle. It's nice seeing a young SB playing sweet & nice Jason Q. Instead of Stone Cold Jason Morgan.  Eric and Shelia were boring as hell. The worse of Monty is still better than JFP or FV.

3 minutes ago, amybrickwallace said:

 

What did "H.B." stand for?

Harlan Billy

The Pollocks dragged the hell out of their stories. For months and months characters would have the same conversions ad nauseam. They were capable creating interesting characters. Toni, Lauri, John, Hank and Mona were great additions. The Pollock could deliver great pay off's. But you had to wait for an eternity. I'm curious to see what Cenedella, DePriest and Marland contributions were. 3 HW's in 2yrs isn't a great sign. It looks like after the Pollocks left The Doctors went through major changes. Which sadly lead to their cancellation. Julia Duffy was awesome as Penny. Penny was a proto Stephanie Vanderkellen.

Coronation Street: Is the much loved soap going down the drain?
These days Coronation Street is completely unbelievable and long-winded, full of murderers and people with issues, complains JAN ETHERINGTON


I know Coronation Street is a soap but I think it's going down the drain and I would like them to pull the plug on their obsession with violent, extreme and overlong storylines.

Once upon a time, Coronation Street was a wry, gritty, humorous look at life in a cobbled back-to-back street.

Now, we have more psychos, murderers, fraudsters, ex-jailbirds and utterly stupid people than you'd ever meet in an entire city, never mind one road.

Has Quentin Tarantino taken over as director?

Take the character of Pat Phelan.

Please, please take him. We've all had enough.

Phelan's thousand-yard stare locks on to anyone he passes.

He's either lurking on street corners, or issuing threats, in classic, pantomime bully mode. He's a murderer and the violence is often explicit.

After he killed for the third time 662 viewers complained.

Bruno Vincent/Getty

Coronation Street launched the career of Suranne Jones (Karen McDonald)
I say all this more in sorrow than in anger because I love Coronation Street and want to enjoy it but I'm turning into Victor Meldrew as I shout at the screen "I don't believe it!" at least three times an episode.

It's the world's longest-running TV soap.

Over the years, leading writers such as Jack Rosenthal, Jimmy McGovern and Russell T Davies (Doctor Who) have contributed episodes and storylines and acting knights Ian McKellen and Ben Kingsley have been among the stampede of big names proud to be part of it.

It's launched the careers of many current stars including Sarah Lancashire, Michelle Keegan and Suranne Jones.

Yes, it's a drama and not real life but the first rule of drama is that you have to believe in the characters.

Otherwise it's fantasy – and currently Corrie is not so much a bubbly soap as a bucket of cold water – shocking and annoying.

It has a wonderful writing team but they are guided by the storyliners, who decide what happens months ahead, to keep us hooked.

Evening Standard/Getty

The Rovers regulars raise a toast to Jack Howarth (Albert Tatlock)
When Coronation Street started, "boxed sets" meant presentation packs of Old Spice aftershave with soap, or matching gloves and a scarf. Now, in many ways, the programme is a victim of boxed set syndrome.

The multiple-series dramas, such as Homeland and Game Of Thrones, have become huge hits and their makers know that once a drama becomes popular, the commercial pressure is on to keep the plots dragging on for whole series.

Film-makers, however, know you can wrap up a good story in a couple of hours.

The writers on Coronation Street have scripted truly magnificent stories over the years – most memorably for Roy Cropper (David Neilson) and the first transsexual character Hayley né Harold Patterson (Julie Hesmondhalgh, whose love for each other endured until, suffering from cancer, she killed herself in 2014.

That was a golden period for Coronation Street.

It proved you can have gripping storylines about good people, where nobody gets punched, or sets fire to the factory.

Popperfoto/Getty

The real golden age of Coronation Street was in the 70s with characters like Alan and Elsie Howard
Yet there is a view – a strong one – that soaps, with their huge viewership, are perfectly placed to bring up storylines which address serious, real-life crises.

But they don't have to do it all the time, do they?

We've had an endless and very harrowing tale of Bethany Platt's teenage grooming abuse.

Admirable.

Keith Hewitt/GC Images

Shayne Ward and Alison King at an event in London
But no sooner has she been rescued from that than she's working in a lap-dancing club.

Currently, there's bipolar Gina Seddon, Robert Preston's gambling, Toyah Battersby's desperation to have a baby – poor Toyah, what a one-note role for her – Eva Price's unwanted pregnancy, Billy Mayhew's guilt at killing Susan Baldwin, Ken Barlow's daughter, in a car crash in 2001.

And at the end of most episodes a call-centre voice instructs us: "If you've been affected by any of the issues, go to the website."

I struggled but I couldn't remember being chained up by a psychotic builder in a basement and force-fed Pot Noodles.

Tim Graham/Getty

Traditionally, soaps have feckless male characters and strong females but I'm appalled that the work-shy laziness of Jack Duckworth, Eddie Windass and Stan Ogden has been replaced by secretive malevolence.

And where are the strong women?

The balcony-chested, brassy barmaids, such as those once portrayed by Julie Goodyear, Sarah Lancashire and Beverley Callard have become fey and troubled Eva, Sarah and Toyah.

Thank goodness there's still a Cruella de Vil in the Street. Tracy Barlow (a convicted murderer), has the best lines.

She marched up to age-gap lovers Carla and Daniel in the Rovers last week: "I hear you've cougared my brother."

More of that please.

Popperfoto/Getty

Hilda and her work-shy husband Stan Ogden muse on life
That's Coronation Street at its best.

Snappy, funny exchanges instead of fear and loathing.

But when did Pat Phelan's wife Eileen – originally, one of the Street's shrewdest, smartest characters – take a stupid pill?

If my husband said, in the middle of the evening, he had to go out for a “bit of business”, I'd jolly well want to know where and with whom.


Can't she see that she's married to a mass murderer?

All the signs are there – the doomy house with a basement he won’t let her see; the number of people who hate him (the entire street); the missing (dead) people connected to him – Michael, Andy, Luke, Vinny?

As Dexys Midnight Runners memorably sang: “Come On, Eileen!”

Even Sue Cleaver, who plays Eileen Phelan, recently admitted that the heavy plotlines are taking their toll.

“It's all getting very dark. It's just too complicated at the moment.”

Dave Benett/Getty

Sue Cleaver (Eileen Grimshaw) and Jane Danson (Leanne Battersby) on a night on the town
Amazingly, the programme makers seem to have reacted to the criticism by viewers and actors of the depressing storylines (which recently included everything from child grooming to kidnap and murder).

They're encouraging the stars to share ideas and participate in shaping their character's fate.

Jane Danson (Leanne Battersby), said: "We can put our creative points of view across now. So, rather than be miserable, we get a little bit of the old characters back."

Hallelujah! But it's also a ploy to stop their stars walking out.

Catherine Tyldesley (Eva Price) is off this summer, while Shayne Ward (Aidan Connor) is also expected to go soon.

Debbie Rush has "left", as her character Anna Windass is in prison for five years.

Malcolm Hebden (the pernickety Norris Cole) is on a health-related "extended break", while Helen Flanagan (who plays Rosie Webster) is leaving to have a baby.

But back to Pat Phelan.




Andy Carver and Vinny Ashford were both killed off by Pat Phelan
 

Spoiler alert!

Photos seem to show he and Eileen setting out in a boat in Cumbria.

Will he drown?

Not very original.

Didn't Joe McIntyre, one of Gail's many deranged husbands, try to fake his own death in a boating accident there?

The Cumbrian Tourist Board should start a "This is where soap actors come to die" tour.

Popperfoto/Getty

Roys Rolls is the scene of many confrontations in Weatherfield
Some choose exits and some have exits thrust upon them.

Lately there has been a rash of departures linked to accusations of "inappropriate behaviour".

There are three ways to leave the Street: be murdered, leave in a taxi gazing back out of a rain-lashed window like Mrs Thatcher quitting number 10, or "go to Portugal".

For my money, aggressively quiffed males Adam Barlow and Zeedan Nazir who let their hair do the talking, restricting their own contribution to heaving sighs and moody dissent, should be the next to get the first plane out.

Maybe the writers could go to Portugal too?

A bit of sunshine might cheer them up and inspire some more light-hearted stories.

Because, for heaven's sake, it's a soap, not an acid bath

Episodes 7/1/85 thru 8/30/85. The Aztec Treasure goes on and on. But it's interesting seeing early Anna and Sean as a villain. It's strange seeing GL's Robert Newman in the nothing role of one of Sean's henchmen.

ClassicGH has also upload 5/1/06 thru 5/31/06. 

9 minutes ago, Dr Neil Curtis said:

I want to see the introduction of Donna. I have been looking for it everywhere. 

Here's Donna Love's first appearance. 

4 minutes ago, amybrickwallace said:

Did Nick's mother ever appear on the show?

No she had passed away when Nick was introduced

44 minutes ago, Juliajms said:

For those of us who detest Woody Allen.

https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/woody-allen-american-film-institute-diane-keaton.html?utm_campaign=thecut&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1

 

He actually called Diane Keaton a fellatrix (yeah, I had to look it up to be sure) in a speech at her life time achievement award.

 

Also 10 facts about the abuse case:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts/amp

 

Most notable to me:

9. The state attorney, Maco, said publicly he did have probable cause to press charges against Allen but declined, due to the fragility of the “child victim.” Maco told me that he refused to put Dylan through an exhausting trial, and without her on the stand, he could not prosecute Allen.

I just looked up what fellatrix means. I wish i haven't.

12 hours ago, victorlord75 said:

Sharon was a good person, but a constant thorn in old-school Lucille's side.  She had a gift for saying the wrong thing around Lucille and one funny story toward the end of Sharon's run was when Sharon got bitten by the acting bug and came to work wearing her nurse's cap--and an orange dress, rather than a white one like a traditional nurse.  Wearing the dress was a way for Sharon to express her creative metamorphosis.  The orange dress drove poor Lucille the Stickler nuts.  I have seen a picture of Sharon in that dress in this thread somewhere.  Sharon was funny and pleasant, but without being a cartoon like so many characters are made to be today that have a lighter touch about them.

Thanks Victorlord75 i started watching GH in late 1987. By that time most of the wonderful characters that populated PC in the 60's and early 70's were long gone. I would love to see this stuff.

50 minutes ago, victorlord75 said:

Sharon's character was a breath of fresh air.  There is no character on soaps today like hers, if you think about it.

How was Sharon Pinkham like? 

1 hour ago, Dr Neil Curtis said:

Could anyone seen Judi Evans as Beth of the 90s and 2000s. In oftentimes think of how an original actor would play a character had they stayed. 

Beth under JE had a inner strength to her. Beth lost that inner strength. When she returned from the dead. Later on Beth became a sour cold fish. I think JE could've played it. But JE would've been playing the complete opposite of the character she created.

1 hour ago, Xanthe said:

 

Yes. M.J. was mostly involved in police work at first. My dim recollection is that she had a degree in psychology and tried to apply that to a case where someone was stalking Quinn. She had a kind of silent crush on Larry that never went anywhere. Jamie had been mixed up with Stacey Winthrop and then Nicole Love, but both of them had left town. Jamie and M.J. met when she mistook him for a criminal for some reason. Their relationship was pretty low-key and she was charmingly neurotic about it. I liked them together but it didn't set the world on fire and then Jamie left town.

 

I liked Kathleen Layman a lot as M.J. and thought she and Julie Osburn (Kathleen) made terrific sisters, but M.J. didn't get a major storyline until after Sally Spencer took over the role. And I liked Ed Fry as Adam tremendously and his romance with M.J.. I could have lived without Chad Rollo and M.J.'s past as a prostitute (at least as it was written), but on the other hand I adored the scene where Adam had to tell her family he was jilting her without revealing why.

It's so strange how the story was aborted. Leaving both Adam and Chad with not much to do until they left Bay City.

41 minutes ago, j swift said:

Who wrote the Mary McKinnon/Marissa LaSalle story?  Do we know why they made the new family McKinnons and not McGowens or any other legacy family since Jake had already left the show? Is it a plot that got disrupted by a writer's strike?  Because for a story about amnesia it has a ton of exposition!

Margaret DePriest wrote it.