CORONATION Street has a signature tune that harks at morbidity and miserablism and features an opening ident of an all-too contented flee-ridden moggy sneering down at a rain-soaked world of bitter, confused people.
Yet, the soap is set to screen its 10,000th episode. Which begs the question: why in the name of Ena Sharples’ hair net has it lasted for 60 years? What is there about the storylines and characters that continue to draw us in? How can cobbled-street dialogue seduce so deliciously?
Now, I hate Coronation Street. Or rather I hate myself for watching it three times a week, although I attempt to allocate it as a guilty pleasure. (But I’d sooner watch BBC Scotland’s wedding documentaries than admit to this in a pub conversation.) Yet, between you and me, I’ve been having a think about its pulling power.
Coronation Street is an education in social psychology. It makes us consider society’s paradigms of the bully, the idiot, the matriarchal woman, for example.
The Street’s multi-layered textures enable us to flit between complexity and stupidity, which is exactly what we encounter in our everyday lives.
It’s a gentle intravenous injection of reality, it’s homeopathic medicine, a mild poison that we can gradually introduce into our system, rather like watching a week’s episodes of Loose Women.
Now, I like to think I can see the storylines coming a mile off, the well-worn tropes. Yet, such is the skill of the writing we’re gradually seduced, prepared to buy into this heightened reality.
In amongst tales of how car mechanic Abi can fire up a knackered engine within minutes, for example, there’s usually a plot line of wrenching pathos, which you know will result in her heart breaking very, very soon.
In soap we are taught the lesson that everything has to go wrong. Indeed, in the Street the perfect relationship is an oxymoron. In the Street crime is almost always a constant, and where there is no criminal act there is the suspicion of same, which leads to wonderful false accusations, prosecutions and often jail. Tragedy abounds.
And the complex, but often daft, storylines allow us to debate moral value systems. The Ken Barlow divergent theory, for example, is all important in helping us contend with those with mixed personality traits: the boss who can be kind – and a monster in equal measure, the man who adores his wife – and yet has had a series of mistresses. And he makes us evaluate the concept of the patriarchy.
Meanwhile, we can hate Gary Windass because he’s a loan-sharking thug, but we also know he suffers from PTSD, from his army stint.
Context plus personal decoding equals continued interest.
This hermeneutic space between comprehension and interpretation is delicious. While Kirk Sutherland is clearly a couple of dog biscuits short of a dinner, this reality is suffused cleverly by the autodidactic Roy Cropper, who will readily quote Wordsworth, or Kant. As will Mary Taylor during her soliloquies. Meanwhile, Gail Platt does little more than bleat like Bo Peep’s herd.
And how can we not wallow in a show in which the smug and the pompous, the likes of Percy Sugden and Maurice Cole, aren’t found out?
That’s not to say Corrie always gets it right. To be honest, I wouldn’t care if Tyrone Dobbs and Fiz Brown never saw their difficult child again – she’s a case for the reintroduction of orphanages. And I think the writers have created some plot stinkers, and jumped the shark all too often with the introduction of Lorraine Kelly and Status Quo.
Now, you may argue other soaps should be mentioned in the mix. It’s fair to say BBC Scotland's River City manages a neat balance between gratuitous Glasgow gangsterism and illicit affairing.
EastEnders, however, is simply awful, full of horrid people. (Coronation Street is more about decent people pushed into performing horrid acts.) Emmerdale seems to be too inbred. And Hollyoaks is a 30 minute selfie.
Anyway, soaps are like lovers: you should confine yourself to one at a time.
But what’s really great about Corrie is that all genders are allowed to be rotten. We’ve had female monsters, female irritants, transsexual robbers, and they come in all shapes and colours. Coronation Street is clearly very comfy in its own skins.
It also has excellent writers who can provide brilliant barbs for its – usually female – characters such as Elsie Tanner, Blanche Hunt and more recently Maureen Lipman’s Evelyn Plummer.
I like the description of Steve McDonald and Tracy Barlow's relationship: "Like Burton and Taylor in a terrace." Or Tracy’s passing remark: "Mary found a downstairs hair in the tagine."
Coronation Street works because it realises our lives are a work in progress. Just watch and see how it helps you deal with Brexit.
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