Coronation Street’s Liz McDonald is having a moment. The miniskirted matriarch has had her fair share of heartbreak, but this month she broke records as her personal parade of wrong ’uns welcomed another member.
After Tony and his shiny head did the dirty with Tracy Barlow, the goddess of pure evil, Liz went straight into a rebound fling with Dan, a man so slimy he glistens. It turns out he once did business with ex-prostitute Leanne, who sent him into a rage by telling Liz about his past. His revenge was to trap the pair of them and little Simon in the flat above the kebab shop. While they fought to escape, life carried on as normal downstairs. “What are they doing up there? Clog dancing?” quipped dopey cabbie Lloyd.
Liz emerged from captivity a broken woman, but she was soon up and running again when Tony tried to worm his way back into her life. “I don’t wanna see your face,” she said, with an air of calculated calm that scares men more than her shriek. “I don’t wanna hear your voice.” Underneath her ball-breaking temperament lies true sadness, which is why it’s never easy to watch Liz’s triple-dose eyeliner running down her face. Hearts broke just as they did when she shouldered the late, great Deirdre Barlow’s coffin into the church. But Liz is pure badass and she won’t be beaten, so it’s not like Tony’s offer of Frescho’s finest flowers is going to make it up to her. She doesn’t need a bouquet, she is made of stronger stuff. What she needs is “a stiff drink and a gab”.
While Liz won new admirers with her stiff upper cleavage and bloke-dismissal skills, super-snob Sally plumbed new depths of irritation. The fact the jobsworth of a PA waffled on about pronouncing kale as “kar-lay” should have been enough to secure her a P45, but then Underworld factory boss Carla discovered she’d been nosing through the accounts. “You can’t fire somebody because they get on your nerves!” protested Sally. How wrong she was.
Over in Emmerdale, Europe’s No 1 travelling funfair rolled into town. Nope, Charity hasn’t been let out of prison early. The waltzers were here to surprise the guests at Debbie and Pete’s wedding. In the grand tradition of soap nuptials, it didn’t end well. Actually, that’s an understatement. Most soaps would class a fight and an “I’m your farver” as a wedding gone wrong. Not Emmerdale. Explosions! Deaths! A helicopter carrying the bride and groom crashing into the village hall! They don’t do things by halves in the Dales.
Of course, there was a big confession, too, as the memory stick containing Debbie’s wedding music didn’t really contain a bunch of James Blunt MP3s, but the bride talking about how she’d shagged the groom’s brother, Ross, in a layby. Always generous with her affections, Debbie was ready to run off with Ross until she found out he was the father of her mum’s baby. The big day didn’t have a particularly promising survival rate, but that’s what you get when Emmerdale does disaster.
The high point in the EastEnders month was Mick Carter’s discussion of both baby and dog poo with Danny Dyer-like finesse. “What kind of a pony have you left in there?” he exclaimed to baby Oliver in his none-more-cockney drawl, before complaining that the Carter pooch Lady Di had left a “dog log” on the carpet. Poetry.
Every light-hearted Walford moment must be balanced out by double the darkness though, and so the Who Killed Lucy Beale? storyline was once again exhumed. Anyone who lived through EastEnders’ live week, which climaxed in Lucy’s 11-year-old stepbrother Bobby being exposed as her killer, was horrified to see the mystery make a comeback. After all, nobody liked Lucy anyway.
Just as Bobby was reaching new heights of brattiness, munching his Marmite on toast like a serial killer and shouting “Die, die, die” into the PlayStation, Max was arrested for Lucy’s murder. By the look on Jane’s face, even she was starting to think that turning Bobby in to the police would be preferable to spending the summer holidays looking after the little oik. Soap justice must be served and little Bobby can only get away with it for so long.
Maybe it’s a massive twist and Max did do it. That’s about as believable as the discovery that crumble-faced undertaker Les Coker has been running two women at once: his wife Pam and that good old-fashioned sexpot Claudette. The man looks like he smells of embalming fluid. How’s he reeling them in? With a special offer of 20% off funerals over the summer? As sage market-trader Donna says: “Never trust a bald man.” Which is a lesson part-time gangster Vincent needed to learn; he was still regarding Phil Mitchell as a “pussycat”. Phil finally had enough of seeing Vincent strut around like cock of the Square and gave him one of his trademark batterings. The more angry Phil gets, the more gravelly his threats become. “Listen,” he growled. “This is my gaff and my rules and if you disrespect me one more time I will kill you.” Classic Mitchell behaviour and about time, too.
