DVD Review: Coronation Street

By Larry Jaffee

I have been hearing about Coronation Street ever since I start the Walford Gazette more than 11 years ago, but until this DVD set, courtesy of Acorn Media, I hadn't the opportunity to actually watch the show with the exception of the odd episode caught while I was in London.

Taken out of context like that, it was difficult to understand what the big fuss was all about. It seemed much more light-hearted than EastEnders, and a bit like an American soap, albeit not with the rich and famous. I wasn't impressed, and was surprised that it could actually at times be more popular in Britain than EE.

But what this DVD does is to provide the history of Corrie, as the fans refer to it, with a 75-minute documentary about its first 40 years, in which the cast regulars over the years comment on its popularity. Among those who passed through the show and reminisce here are Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) and Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous).

The real revelation in this two-disc set is the other disc that contains Coronation Street's first five episodes, broadcast originally in 1960. The pilot introduces the viewer to the community and the interrelationships among the characters soon become evident.

Unlike the Corrie of today, at its start the series was the small-screen equivalent of the kitchen-sink dramas that characterised much of British film in the late 1950s through to the mid-1960s.

The Coronation Street character Ken Barlow at the beginning of the series is college educated but unemployed. He has a sizable chip on his shoulder that is reminiscent of Richard Burton in Look Back in Anger.

There's no doubt that Coronation Street was the archetype for what would come with EastEnders, although as the BBC's Mal Young pointed out in the last issue, by the mid-1980s EastEnders had more in common with Brookside (his former employer) in dealing with social issues than did Coronation Street.

Remarkably, 43 years after his debut in the show William Roache, the actor who plays Barlow is still at it. One wonders if Adam Woodyatt will still be playing Ian Beale in 20-plus years.

And EastEnders fans will see a lot of Lou Beale in Coronation Street's acerbic Ena Sharples.

Wouldn't it be nice if the BBC gave EastEnders such a DVD?

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