Coronation Street: Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

I'm just glad you're still speaking to me with my Emmerdale rantings...

What upset you the most?

I am going to skip the Bethany stuff, unless something brilliant happened?

[Bright Eyes]

You know you're one of my favourite posters. It was really nice what you said when you wished me Happy Birthday a couple weeks ago. I was touched.

As for Corrie, I'm not that hard to please and I do think Blackburn has done some very, very good things with the show. However, this funeral had nothing. No heart, no history, no tragedy, nothing. Ken's grief at losing his wife was written very by the numbers. He could have been any random husband grieving for his wife. There was so much pettiness as well from Ken towards Tracy, Norris existing for "comedy", bringing Liz's new beau to the funeral to snipe at Leanne, Liz constantly saying Dierdre was HER best mate, even getting Eileen to say she thought she was with Liz replying, "Well you are now." Or something to that effect. They even felt it necessary to have Bev shade Audrey's closeness to Ken.

As I said before, I'm very interested in Robert's return and what it could mean for Tracy. It seems the show is now taking an honest effort to have her grow up a bit, but throughout the episode we got some very clunky dialogue like when Tracy introduced Robert to Steve. "Steve, this is my ex-husband Robert. Robert, this is my ex-husband Steve." And everyone singing Bridge Under Troubled Water felt so odd and uncomfortable. As a personal gripe, I usually hate when characters are shown having little conversations as the funeral is happening.

For someone like Deidre, though admittedly I'm far from a Corrie historian, it just seemed like she barely had any life at all. Could she not have gotten some flowers from some long ago lover, maybe Billy Walker? Were her only friends in those 4 decades she was on the show Liz and Bev? Has she not had any close relationships with someone other than Ken, a character who she once admitted wasn't even the love of her life. If this were EastEnders, whatever that show's faults, they would have been more honest about her relationship with Ken. Her send off would have been better. It would have seemed like it mattered. Compare her send off to Jim Branning's on EE and it just felt like Deirdre wasn't anywhere near one of the most iconic soap characters of all time. Hell, even Phoebe McQueen got a better send off and that had the love of her life, Robbie, hooking up with Nancy on the same day.

The cherry on top of the hollow cake was Amy constantly being lauded as the next Blanche, with her witty repartee. Another trope I despise, and I have faith you'll abhor, too. There was also that one church lady sexually assaulting Kevin. Just cringeworthy all around. Emily, Tracy being comforted by Robert, and Michelle not being there were the only saving graces.

There might have been more, but that's what stuck.

[TimWil]

I'm so disappointed to read these comments. I don't think the term "looking forward" applies but I was hoping the episodes would do right by Anne Kirkbride.

[Bright Eyes]

I'm holding out hope that today's Barlow free for all makes up for it, at least a little bit.

[DRW50]

One of the perks of going through the random 1994 episodes I have is getting to see amazing moments like these. I guess they were somewhat of a dying breed on Corrie even by this point, but these scenes are so good I had to clip them from the hour episode they were in and put them up. This is one of those episodes, along with the one about 6 years ago where Emily berated Norris after his brother died, that show what a truly, truly superb actress and national treasure Eileen Derbyshire is. And imagine a quiet, slowly building, powerful 5-6 minute scene today.

Please register in order to view this content

Edited July 16, 2015 by DRW50

[DRW50]

Former Corrie writer pretty much says it best:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s3/coronation-street/news/a658558/ex-coronation-street-writer-criticises-deirdre-barlow-funeral-it-felt-false-and-engineered.html

Anyway, I did watch last night's episode and it was one of the best Corrie episodes I've seen in ages, mostly down to the Ken/Tracy/Peter stuff. Rooted in history, unflinching, without going over the top. The scenes with Peter and Tracy on their own were especially good. I wish we got that type of writing more often.

The rest didn't do much for me, but it was OK.

Actually I did like the scene where Bev and Audrey mended fences. That reminded me a lot of old Corrie. It was a nice moment. I've enjoyed Bev's return far more than I would have thought, considering how annoying she was before.

Edited July 16, 2015 by DRW50

[Bright Eyes]

The ex Corrie writer was on point, as I amateurishly mentioned above.

Thank you for uploading that Emily scene. It's always great to see her get the spotlight. So, who did tell this Bernard about Emily's breakdown?

[DRW50]

Percy.

[TimWil]

Richard Hawley and Faye Brookes are joining as members of the Connor clan. I remember thinking Hawley was very sexy on Family Affairs:

https://twitter.com/itvcorrie/status/623091213655240704

[BetterForgotten]

The Connon clan needed extending? Oh god....

[DRW50]

They will likely be pointless, like most Connors.

I still wish they'd bring back Tom.

[NothinButAttitude]

They're giving Michelle more family?

TPTB are determined to make this character stick when the general consensus on her has been the same since her inception--no one cares for her at all.

[DRW50]

Watching more of 1994 I realize how similar Denise Black and Eva Pope sound, and even look. It's too bad the show didn't have Tanya and Denise related. Can you imagine?

At what point did Bill Waddington become known for barely remembering his lines? He's still pretty good at this point (April 1994).

[TimWil]

I always noticed the physical similarities between the two actresses, Carl. I thought Eva Pope had the edge in that she was sexy.

Edited July 22, 2015 by TimWil

[DRW50]

I think Denise Black was too, but not as much as Eva. Corrie really should have rolled out the money trucks to try to keep Eva on the show. She was dynamite. Her scenes with Des in the last episode I uploaded (my channel is Steph Stokes if you want to see it), smoking and smoking while sitting around with her hair a mess and wearing her dressing gown, are more like Elsie Tanner than anything Michelle or Liz or whoever else gets that moniker could ever be.

Speaking of Denise, someone said she was on This Morning recently to talk about Emmerdale and they spent the whole time asking her about Corrie. That's pretty disrespectful, but I do hope Corrie may bring her back once her ED stint is over (I have a feeling she's dying on there in a few weeks).