The Road To Coronation Street Discussion

[Y&RWorldTurner]

[Bright Eyes]

Sweet! Now to wait ...

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I thought the movie was very well done, and very historically accurate. The cast did a fantastic job, and you can tell this was a labour of love for Daran Little.

Tony Warren must have really loved Pat Phoenix a lot in his personal life, the movie did a great job of showcasing how fond they were of each other off the show. I thought Jessie Wallace did a remarkable job as Pat Phoenix, and it's nothing like her renown portrayal of Kat Slater on EastEnders. She really captured Pat Phoneix/Elsie Tanner's essence beautifully.

Lynda Baron (who played Violet Carson/Ena Sharples) was also magnificent.

[Bright Eyes]

I never knew a Canadian had anything to do with Corrie. It makes me proud of my people. Go us!

Just to be clear, Tony Warren is gay then, yeah?

Watching the credits I almost teared up. I loved seeing all those old pictures of who I'm assuming were the actual portrayers. Was that the case also with the pictures on the bulletin board in the last scene?

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Yes, he's been out since day one.

I believe so.

[DRW50]

The bulletin board was the actual actors, yes. Just going by character names, they were the actors who played Albert Tatlock, Florrie Lindley (I think), Minnie Caldwell, Dennis Tanner, Frank Barlow, Harry Hewitt, and I think Ida Barlow, and Ken's girlfriend. I'm not sure who the last woman was, the bottom photo.

I thought it was fantastic. I'm so happy that the BBC made such effort to document with such heart, humor, and restraint (there was much less fawning than there could have been), the birth of such an important pop culture icon. I thought the casting was great, for the most part. Lynda Baron and the woman who played Annie were wonderful -- at first I wasn't sure about Annie/Doris Speed but she got all those mannerisms. David Dawson was excellent as Tony Warren. And Jessie Wallace...what can you say? After a bit of rustiness in her first scene she WAS Pat/Elsie. She came alive in that brilliant scene where Pat and Tony read the Elsie/Dennis argument. After that she never let go. She even looked a lot like Pat. Her conversation with Tony Warren near the end of the movie was so moving. Jessie was just magic. It reminds you of what raw talent and charisma she had.

I also thought the casting in the behind the scenes roles was great. The man who played Harry was the heart of the picture, more than Tony Warren. The director, Derek (I thought he was kind of cute...), was also good, a solid presence. The woman who went around cleaning was also good, although she made a lot of faces (but then she's Anthony Cotton's mother I think).

The only one I didn't buy was Bill Roache's son. He looked more like Luke Wilson than his father, and his acting was very awkward.

I teared up when I saw those photos, because I was reminded of how special those early years were, and still remain. I wish this had been put on BBC2 or BB3 at least, and perhaps they could make more, as I'd love to see more about the cast reactions to the show's success, and also see Tony Warren have to deal with the ugly homophobia which helped drive him away from Corrie and into a downward spiral. But this was such a gift, and a beautifully wrapped one at that.

The man who played Derek has been on Corrie and Eastenders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Stuart#Tom_Stuart

http://coronationstreet.wikia.com/wiki/Ritchie_Fitzgerald

The man who played HV Kershaw (a major write for Corrie for years), played the cowboy Jessie on the show last year, Eileen's boyfriend. Sad that to some he epitomized the problems of the show's recent years. He deserved better material than the stories he had.

Thank you BBC for this movie. And look, ITV/Phil Collinson/et al, no shock value stories or disasters for the anniversary!

[EricMontreal22]

So this was written by Corrie archivist/ex writer Little who was at AMC for the past two years and seemed to do zip all, and now is at Eastenders? Anyway, I thought it was terrific.

[DRW50]

Yes.

He mouthed off about Corrie when he moved onto the Hollyoaks franchise but he does seem to love Corrie, it's in his blood, and it shows. He went back to Corrie again last year before Kirkwood hired him.

I think people don't quite get just how special Corrie was in those early years. It was not some dull thing where people sat around being boring. Too bad this project was not on a bigger channel.

[Bright Eyes]

Bringing up Bill Roache's son, I though he looked a lot like Brendan Fehr. Maybe that,s because I just watched Sugar right before it, but still, there was a strong resemblance.

[Cat]

The film seems to be part of a larger theme BBC4 is doing at the moment -- Britain in 1960 and how it was a lynchpin year for the country culturally and socially. On Tuesday, they had one documentary showing actual scenes from very early Coronation Street and both the real Pat Phoenix and Violet Carson were gripping.

This TV movie, though... I loved how much love there was for the show on it. Jessie Wallace was a revelation. She really is made for these larger-than-life character parts. She went through a fallow period once she left EE and I'm wondering whether she had the actor's equivalent of writer's block. She was so associated with Kat Slater, after all. I didn't think of Kat or EE once during that TRTCS, that's how complete Wallace's portrayal of Pat was.

It was clear that the starting point for all of Tony Warren's matriarchal characters was his mother, no?

I also thought it was interesting the way the execs insisted that this was a show that was going to be judged on its own merits, and that they were not going to led the advertisers dictate to them what sort of show it should be. It makes an interesting comparison with the US daypart. And it also illustrates how much of an impact realistic new wave cinema made on television projects like this (see also Cathy Come Home).

All in all, it was about celebrating one man's love for writing serial drama and his characters, especially the strong female ones. It was refreshingly not cynical.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think Kat Slater was such a popular/big character (and the most iconic characters EastEnders and British soaps in general created in the 00's) that Jessie's acting abilities were often overlooked because the media liked the focus on her personal life (which was very tumultuous during her first stint on EastEnders) and though she won a ton of awards for playing Kat, the media and fans liked to focus on her personal life and Kat Slater's larger than life attributes. People just assumed that Jessie Wallace and Kat Slater were the same person and that she couldn't play anyone else.

Since leaving EastEnders, she did that critically acclaimed musical biopic on the life of Mary Lloyd, where she played the title character and got tons of positive reviews. Though she's always admitted that she accepts that to most people, she'll always be Kat.

Anyway, she really became Pat Phoenix in this and mastered her Northern accent. I love Kat Slater, but I too didn't see an ounce of Kat in this performance (and Kat was of course created in the same tart with a heart mold as Elsie Tanner).

[Sylph]

So it had 860,000 viewers?

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Considering this is BBC Four we're talking about, that's fantastic.

[Sylph]

I'm reading these reviews... And Alvin really went full force to say it's exccccccccccccccccccccellent!

Others? Not so much. One mentioned "ploddy" direction and "script cheesy at times" and [that] "people said things that were ridiculously full of import. They did not converse; they made speeches".

Typical.

Telegraph had an interesting ending paragraph:

Of course.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

The reviews were pretty positive yesterday, but yes, it had some very cheesy elements. But what else would you expect from a picture that's dedicated to the makings of a pop cultural establishment? The fact that it was made with Corrie in mind probably turned a lot off in the first place.