Strange days on the cobbles
CORONATION STREET TV3, TONIGHT, 9PM
IT’S usually a bad sign when a soap decides to do a later run in the evening.
In fact, it’s usually a sign that the producers have run out of ideas, or when it comes to Hollyoaks, a sign that they have run out of clothes for the cast.
In the case of Coronation
Street (TV3/ITV, tonight,
9pm), it’s more a sign that the producers no longer have a clue about their own show.
It’s not so much that they have become creatively barren, it’s just that the ideas they have don’t really work for a tea-time soap format. So, in their desperate attempts to turn Corrie from a much loved, frequently comic programme into some sort of hard-hitting, gritty urban hellscape, we’ve seen hostages taken, young women groomed into the sex industry, a man was raped, another killed himself, a vicious psychopath was captured and tied up before somehow escaping and then, last night, there was a shooting, which is the set-up for tonight’s finale.
The problem with the producers’ claims that they are just trying to ‘make things more real and reflective of modern society’ is that they obviously have a pretty grim view of modern society.
But more profound is the sense that they just don’t particularly like Coronation Street.
The current villain, Pat Phelan, is played completely straight. Back in the day of more traditional Wetherfield villains such as Richard Hillman, they tended to smirk, twirl their moustache and come as close to breaking the fourth wall as you could possibly get.
These days, the villains are snarling, red-faced monsters.
Frankly, if we wanted that sort of thing we’d just stick to EastEnders... Arrested Development
(Netflix) came back this week to a rather unusual fanfare – the cast turned on each other at a public interview session when Jessica Walter, who plays the ferocious Lucille, accused her on-screen husband Jeffrey Tambor of repeatedly bullying her throughout their earlier seasons.
It’s all gone a bit meta and real-life events seem to have caught up with the fictional family.
Even the decision to have Tambor portray his character, George Sr, as a woman seems to have been overtaken by events.
The joke in Ron Howard’s narration that: “George Sr soon realised his impression of a woman wasn’t going to win him any awards”, a direct reference to Tambor’s role in Transparent, seems dated.
After all, Tambor was fired from that show for his behaviour.
Still, it’s good to have them back and some of the gags are as viciously brilliant as we’ve come to expect.