Eee, by 'eck, our Jack'n'Vera (Coronation Street)

Member Name: pmcds

Product:	Coronation Street
Date:	09/11/09 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great soap

Disadvantages: Nothing really

Coronation Stree, better known as Corrie, has been running on ITV since 1960. It was first aired in black and white, and tells the lives of the inhabitants of Coronation Street in a Manchester suburb. The cobbled streets and old buildings, coupled with the relaxing and soothing brass theme music for the programme mask a street full of controversy, and this has been the case since it started all those years ago.

It is, along with Eastenders, the forerunner of British soaps. The two soaps have long endured competition, with Emmerdale, also an ITV soap, sort of taking a permanent 3rd place role. You see the lives of the one street as they mingle and storylines develop. The writers manage to create believable storylines and plots, with affairs and bustups, marriage, divorce, kidnapping, and general gossip being the order of the day for the majority of the half an hour episodes it airs in.

The magic of the show is probably rooted in its long standing characters. While other soaps tend to get through characters like a knife through butter, Corrie seems to have a high retention of characters, with those such as Ken Barlow and Rita Sullivan having been there since before I was born. There is a good mix of ages and living situations, with families as well as couples and older people who live on their own. Gail and her many husbands seems to be a recurring theme, as does the theme of affairs that runs through the Webster family, with all of them getting frisky on a regular basis.

The show's reality is also based on the relative poverty and cutthroat businesslike nature that a lot of them exude. A lot of it centres round the Rovers Return, the pub, and I quite like this. I think it's brilliant that most soaps have a pub to centre things round, and it helps make the plots seem a bit more real. There is also a taxi company, the corner shop, the beauty parlour and other small businesses that help keep things running smoothly, and the characters all intermingle quite nicely.

It is only occasionally that a big storyline will hit. Most of the time, things are built up, and I quite like it like this as it adds to the entertainment factor. Knowing something, as a fly on the wall viewer, that others in the soap don't know, is quite appealing, and it makes it all the more enjoyable to watch. The show deals with some fairly serious issues on occasion, and has been praised for its dealing with situations such as transgender operations and also an affair between an school pupil and a teacher.

Throughout everything, Corrie maintains a certain element of comedy, which lurks just beneath the surface, and within some of its characters. I find this adds to the enjoyment factor, as too much doom and gloom would make me just want to turn over. As it is, I watch Corrie every now and then, and don't feel I have to watch every single episode to get an understanding of what's going on, and I feel this is the main appeal: the continuity.

Corrie airs evenings at 7.30 or 8.00 on ITV, and is occasionally on later as well. Some nights have two episodes sandwiching a different programme, often leaving it on a bit of a knife edge at the edn of the first episode. I like this format too. Overall, I recommedn you give this a go if, for some reason, you haven't already. It's entertaining.

Summary: ITV's forerunning soap