In the beginning, of course, every episode of Coronation Street was broadcast live, because that’s how things were done in those days. But more recently, after decades of the safety of pre-recordings, it was Corrie that pioneered the now traditional live-anniversary-stunt-episode format.
It’s a soap staple now. When Corrie turned 40 in 2000, it marked the occasion with an hour-long live political thriller involving Ken’s crusade to save the cobbles from the Tarmackers (the likelihood of a residential Salford street still having its cobbles is only marginally greater than all those EastEnders characters being able to afford their million-pound houses). Ten years later, Corrie’s live 50th bonanza saw the aftermath of stray a tram ploughing into the cobbles Ken worked so hard to save, culling Ashley and Molly in the process. (The council still chose to repair the cobbles rather than Tarmac the place).
Emmerdale has since got in on the act, and this year, EastEnders upped the ante with its 30th anniversary “live week”, an audacious idea on paper, but one that paid huge dividends. Shock reveals like Kathy’s return from the dead and little Bobby Beale being revealed as his sister’s real killer provided that rarest of things in the age of catch-up and streaming; genuine water-cooler television.
This time, going live to mark 60 years of ITV, Corrie has allowed itself no big stunt disasters or murder mystery resolutions. The big sell is that it’s all about story, which could be a calculated risk, as the big story in question is the climax of pound-shop gangster Callum’s reign of terror over the Platts.
In the event, the only thing you could call a failure about the broadcast was the admirable but ultimately pointless digital efforts made with the online Corrie AAA endeavour, which demonstrated exactly how interesting it can fail to be if you plant 11 secret cameras on a working TV set on a live feed, peppered with Tweets and Facebook updates already being read on the smartphones by the only people interested in that sort of thing, along with occasional interaction with Stephen Mulhern. #CorrieLive was the UK’s biggest trending topic anyway, but bravo for trying.
Technically, barely a foot was put wrong, save for a couple of entirely forgivable reverse camera pans. And if anybody did fluff their lines, there was no obvious “Hello Adam” moment. Certainly, the nearby Old Trafford football crowd brought none of the sonic hooliganism some had predicted.
Content-wise, this was Corrie at its best – and occasionally its most frustrating. Far and away, the strongest strand was Roy and Cathy taking their awkward, grief-stricken love story to its next level, from her putting her foot in it over their Blackpool debacle to the tentative exit from the “friend zone” at the back of that abandoned bus. As a viewer, I feel almost as much a traitor to Julie Hesmondhalgh as Roy must to Hayley – which is not to say that Melanie Hill as Cathy is not the show’s most valuable addition of recent years.
The live edition’s necessary sense of pageantry came with the departures of longtime favourite Lloyd and newish favourite Andrea. Craig Charles is off to return to Red Dwarf, and actor Hayley Tammadon (apparently reluctantly) is going with him. Lost in that strand was Lloyd’s goodbye to his best mate Steve McDonald, a necessary consequence of actor Simon Gregson being on leave for personal reasons, but one gallantly dealt with in a callback to Steve’s recent depression storyline.
Elsewhere, my current favourite character Yasmeen’s status as a grieving mother once again denied her the comedy she’s so good at, Tracy Barlow was nowhere to be seen, and Sally got her comeuppance. Snobby Sally’s relationship with window-cleaner Tim – in her head an urban reworking of Lady Chatterley’s Lover – has been the best story in Corrie of recent months. If they can play the serious emotional stuff as well as they have done the comedy, they’ll surely seal their place in the Corrie Couples Hall of Fame. More seriously, I will never forgive That Caitlin for standing up Our Craig on their first proper date.
Which brings us to the big stuff. It probably stands to reason, after everything the Platts have been through over the years, that they absolutely would keep a monkey wrench in their front porch, just in case a pound-shop gangster needed murdering at short notice. And any fool could tell where Callum was going to end up just as soon as Gail started gutting the foundations for her new extension, and now Kylie is a murderer, which is sure to claim consequences. Callum Jordache anyone? Yet, as daft as that story was, the young trio of Platts knocked what they had to work with out of the park – Tina O’Brien in particular has never been better.
If there’s a shame to Corrie’s big endeavour, it’s that the Platts vs Callum never felt like the strongest story in play. As menacing and swarthy as Sean Ward was, I for one never quite bought into it. Imagine how brilliant this could have been if the recent, incredible, Tracy-v-Carla stuff had played out live? Harsh, maybe, because we expect the best from the best. But congratulations to everyone involved. Whatever might happen to ITV, let alone its rival the BBC, it seems entirely likely that Corrie will be celebrating similar milestones in another 60 years. And God Save Annie Walker for that.
