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Most people celebrate an anniversary with flowers, presents, a party, maybe, but TV soaps have a tendency to laugh in the face of reality, and this week’s 50th anniversary of Coronation Street – Britain’s longest running soap – was no exception. Who needs champagne when you can have a full-scale demolition of the set and a live episode to follow? The producers had clearly been saving up their pocket money for this one, and it showed: this week’s events were, in a word, epic.
The character’s plotlines have been building for some time over the past weeks, and the writers have dealt with some pretty deep issues: Gary’s post-traumatic stress disorder as he deals with the death of a fellow serviceman; the discovery of David’s epilepsy; and the building tension as Molly threatens to reveal all about her affair with Kevin. Well, deep-ish.
No expense was spared on Monday, the night of the crash. Whilst hosting a stag night, The Joinery was torn apart by a gas explosion, causing the tram viaduct to collapse. For those viewers who were unable to keep up in the confusion, Ken Barlow was on hand to explain the significance of events. “Peter’s in there!” he exclaimed, as the driver of the approaching tram hammered furiously on the big, red STOP button, to no avail (so annoying when those fail-safe mechanisms fail, isn’t it?). For a couple of sickeningly slow seconds, the back carriage rose, carried by the momentum, and then plummeted to the ground, turning half of the street into a blazing inferno. It truly was a television masterpiece – as the cameras cut rapidly to each of the characters and showed aerial shots of the street, it was like watching a disaster movie.
Many people find soap operas too depressing to watch, and viewing Thursday’s live episode, it was easy to see their point. Screaming and crying dominated most of the episode, and whilst brilliantly acted, it did sometimes appear to be a way of masking any fluffed lines. Nevertheless, one of the most harrowing scenes was possibly Claire Peacock silently sobbing as she replayed her dead husband’s final voice message on her answer phone. Coupled with the dying moments of widowed bigamist and recovered alcoholic Peter Barlow, I was beginning to feel a little teary eyed towards the end. Most remarkable were the performances of Chris Gascoyne and Jane Danson as Peter and Leanne Battersby as they finally tied the knot in the hospital. It must be difficult to control the waterworks at the best of times, but to sustain such emotion for an hour was pretty impressive stuff. Another notable and understated scene for me had to be Gary Windass’s painful breakdown reliving Afghanistan, as he heard the sirens and explosions from outside. Some pretty nifty camera effects, along with the writing and acting, have no doubt sealed Corrie’s television award nominations for next year.
And yet, even within the most tense and devastating scenes, Corrie still manages to mix in the comic relief. So as John Stape – Corrie’s own Mr Bean (that is, if Mr Bean was prone to accidentally bludgeoning people with hammers) witnesses the birth of his premature daughter, he still has his mind on the almost-dead body of Charlotte Hoyle that’s currently lying in his living room. You really do need a certain amount of suspended belief, but that’s soap operas for you, and here, Coronation Street has it sussed. This to me is what cements it as one of Britain’s best-loved soaps.
Happy Birthday, Corrie. I just hope my own 50th birthday won’t be this eventful…
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