Close the door, put out the light. No, they won't be home tonight. In a move that sees Britain's biggest soap offering no quarter to its television rivals, Coronation Street has announced the unprecedented arrival of ... Murder Week.
From next Monday, a week's worth of storylines will converge on the imminent assassination of inveterate womaniser Liam Connor by incensed love rival/inveterate idiot Tony Gordon, a Scotsman whose Scottishness ebbs and flows in relation to the perceived evilness of his circumstances. (Nipping into Roy's Rolls for a ham and pickle cob? Here, have a pleasantly indeterminate you-take-the-highroad mid-Scots brogue. Just caught saucy fiancee Carla with her forearm down Liam's cords round the back of the Rovers? Take this disconcertingly guttural Glasgow street bawl and SHOVE IT DOON YURR THROAT YA BAS, etc.)
What's more, the whole thing will be set over the course of one day in real time. You know. Like 24. Which means, in this case, almost three hours of watching Fiz scratching herself through her New Look stirrup tights and Dev chuckling suggestively as he chooses the most appropriate biscuit to plunge really slowly into his endless mug of Brooke Bond Red Label with his eyes closed. Or does it? "Three different endings have been filmed," hoots the press bumf, hopping from foot to foot, "but viewers will not know which one is going to be used until the moment of the murder."
1) Tony pushes Liam off the balcony of a posh new apartment, thus dashing his sexy noggin on the cobbles below. Oomph. Crunch. Possibly, etc.
2) Tony runs Liam over during his stag night, while the latter wears a yellow hoodie and – notebooks out, meta fans - a cutout Tony face mask. Nee-naw. Too late. Maybe, etc.
3) Tony shoots Liam during a bout of stag-related paintball. Splatch. Gurgle. Perhaps, etc.
Clearly, the most surprising element of Murder Week is not the murder. After all, being a "looker", Liam's days were always numbered. From the moment he swaggered into the Street with his own molars and a complexion that wasn't the colour of medieval clay there's been a giant invisible egg timer hovering over his cranium, counting down to the inevitable moment when said skull would be smashed to bits by an infuriated romantic opponent or devastated lady admirer.
The real surprise is that it's taken a soap - not least a soap as pantomimically predisposed to exaggerated thrills and unabashedly ludicrous spills as Coronation Street - so long to come up with such a splendidly mad idea.
So. Should the innate soap incredulity gap encourage other such flexible/imaginative attitudes towards formats, or should continuing dramas maintain a connection with reality in order to display, when storylines demand it, their much-vaunted "social conscience"? Is Murder Week a bad and possibly desperate thing, or a good and therefore potentially quite influential thing and, if it's the latter, how about furnishing us with your own ideas re: the various ways in which soaps could/should snazz up their bag? Your brilliantly original thoughts below, if you would be so kind.
