She played popular Rovers Return barmaid and landlady Shelley Unwin on Coronation Street for five years and Sally Lindsay was inspired by one of her biggest soap storylines for her new TV drama.
Sally, who went on to star in Mount Pleasant, Still Open All Hours, Ordinary Lies, Moving On and Cold Call, has harked back to her Corrie days to create, co-write and executive-produce The Madame Blanc Mysteries.
The actress from Stockport was inspired by the bigamy storyline she was involved with in Coronation Street, which she’d always wanted to explore further, when she created Jean White, a widowed antiques dealer who travels to the French village of Sainte Victoire to sort out her husband’s affairs.
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In the Channel Five drama which launched on Saturday night Jean, played by Sally, discovers that her husband had a secret life and she ends up playing detective on a number of cases including her husband’s death.
Sally, who also developed the idea for the hit detective drama Scott & Bailey with Suranne Jones, dreamed up the concept for The Madame Blanc Mysteries between scenes on the set of Still Open All Hours.
She explained: "I've always pitched ideas for shows since leaving Coronation Street.
"Scott & Bailey was the most successful, and I helped develop Mount Pleasant too.
"The Madame Blanc Mysteries is the first show I’ve pitched on this scale – I’ve written it, produced it, starred in it and washed the cups at the end of the day! I like putting the jigsaw together."
Explaining how the inspiration for the series goes all the way back to the start of her career she said: "I’ve had so many ideas over the years and written hundreds of treatments, but it’s only occasionally that one catches fire.
"I did a bigamy storyline on Coronation Street and was fascinated by it, the idea that all of a sudden everything you thought was real just isn't.
"I've always been fascinated that concept, but had never really explored it since then. And Britain’s brilliant antique shows were a massive inspiration."
Corrie viewers were gripped when, back in 2003, Peter Barlow married Shelley while still married to Lucy Richards.
After confessing to his affair, but failing to mention that he was married to the other woman, Peter made it up the aisle and entered into a bigamous marriage with Shelley.
When Shelley learned that Peter was married to Lucy and they had a baby son, Simon, she threw Peter out and nursed a broken heart while trying to run the Rovers Return with her mother Bev.
