Hello again campers! Let’s continue our journey through 1976. I might get to the end of the year by the time I die. The biggest drama in these episodes is Gail being cited as co-respondent in the Thornleys’ divorce. This whole sub-plot is an argument for “sex liberation”, as Hilda puts it in a conversation […]

This has been an unconscionably long hiatus, during which all of YouTube user Auntie Corrie’s vintage Coronation Street playlists were deleted thanks to ITV getting unreasonable about copyright violation. (It’s a bit rich of ITV to get all precious about this, since they haven’t released the complete run of episodes for purchase anywhere.) I am […]

I summarised Coronation Street’s year (2015 in New Zealand, 2013 in the UK) for The Spinoff, should any of you be interested in my take on Mary’s wallaby hotpot. Also, Deirdre sings Rihanna.

You’re probably sick of me overthinking Ken Barlow by now, so perhaps I will turn my attention to overthinking Mrs Annie Walker, Rovers Return landlady, behaviour regulator and overall status-grubber. Because Coronation Street is quick to punish those getting above their station, her aspirations and faux-poshness are ripe for ridicule. As I was watching these […]

I’m not really even sure what else I can say about salad, at this point. It’s like I’m in some sort of weird semiotic time-travelling dance-off with the past scriptwriters of Coronation Street. Each post in which I overthink characters eating salad seems to be greeted with another episode in which the salad ante is […]

[Oh dear, at the rate I’m blogging these I’ll never get out of 1976! Tell my family not to get the flu next time, would you? Still, onward!] How overtly a soap opera reflects the times in which it was made can be both deliberate or unwitting. From a distance of nearly forty years, in […]

Many apologies for the longer-than-usual gap between this post and the last. My life interrupted my Coronation Street viewing, which I’m sure you all agree is completely unacceptable. Especially when there is Plonker Ernest wielding a scythe like the grim reaper to contend with! Poor old Plonker Ernest. He’s been to the accountant and his […]

Secrets and lies aren’t just for Mike Leigh films. If a soap opera doesn’t contain a regular heaping helping of fibs, hidden shames, and misunderstandings, it isn’t a success. The thing is, there doesn’t have to be something life-shattering like a love child or a serial killer to express drama: Coronation Street has a history of finding […]

If you had told me before I started this blog that salad would become a recurring motif in my posts, I would have been nonplussed. Yet here we are again, watching Ken mope sadly about the place because Wendy has buggered off. In an attempt to comfort his glum nephew, Uncle Albert Tatlock suggests that […]

*Malapropist Hilda, trying to tell the assembled faithful at the Rovers that she always knows what Stan is thinking The trials and tribulations of Ken Barlow continue apace during this trio of episodes which centre around the Bank Holiday street party he organises as Community Development Officer. Most of the street’s residents are mildly cynical about […]