Coro on fast-forward

If Jack Duckworth were still with us, he’d be spluttering into his pint of Newton & Ridley. ‘‘Ey up, our Vera, have you heard what them daft beggars down at butt end o’ t’ world are up to?’’ TVNZ has just announced its latest cunning plan to tackle the long-running problem it has with the beloved soap opera, which has been screening in Britain since 1960, when TV was in black and white, and streaming was something that only happened in schools. Over there, it’s on at primetime five nights a week, and still attracts an audience of more than seven million. But here it’s on only three nights a week, and sometimes gets bumped from the schedules entirely when events such as the Commonwealth Games are on.

The storylines we’re seeing here are now 18 months behind those in Britain – so far that it’s almost as if we’re living in a parallel universe. For all we know, on the other side of the world, Ken Barlow – if he’s still alive – has just received his telegram from the Queen.

So TVNZ plans to catch up in one fell swoop: from the week beginning June 11, the episodes broadcast in primetime here will abruptly leap forward by 18 months. To help bewildered viewers cope, there will be a single two-hour special on June 10, in which all the births, deaths, marriages, affairs and dirty dealings will tumble pell-mell on top of one another. Think of it as Coronation Street performed by the Reduced Shakespeare Company.

But maybe it’s not such a bad idea. If all our favourite TV shows could be condensed into a brief highlights reel, how much more time we’d have for the important things in life – like reading newspapers.