CORONATION STREET

There are two ways familiar people return to Soapland: either they reappear with a different head, having been re- cast, or the same actor comes back and invests the personality with a whole new set of character traits (usually bad ones – look at EastEnders’ Max, played by Jake Wood).

EastEnders’ original Mel (Tamzin Outhwaite) arrived back as if she’d never been away, managing to bag a man in her usual record time. This week sees the original Kim (Claire King) turning up in Emmerdale, where her vicious tongue is… well, as vicious as it ever was. Her appearance is welcome, but a little disconcerting as last year King finished a stint on Corrie as Liz’s flighty friend Erica. They were the man-vamping duo of the north – no change in Liz (Beverley Callard) when she returned to the Street, then.

Corrie’s Jim (Charles Lawson) has also resurfaced, still insisting on calling everyone by their full names – Elizabeth, Steven – but now a conman as well as a bank robber, wife-beater, killer and drunk.

Why so many returning characters, though? Is the imaginative well really so dry?

DANCING WITH FATE

And so the big day arrives, with Steve marrying someone he’s not crazy about (please don’t say Leanne is pregnant again after their second encounter of the first kind) and Tracy wearing a dress that looks as if it’s had a run-in with a fox. With Tracy (pictured, with Steve) thinking Steve’s having an affair with Abi, she gives him the obligatory slap across the face, but will she be calmed when she learns they were only dancing – albeit dirty dancing? And when Ken and Beth favour Daniel and Sinead’s wedding (inset), will the ceremony go ahead?

Keen to give Sinead a simple wedding, Dan-

iel goes for a last-minute, rush-job pagan ceremony (euphemism for lazy). And how mean of Ken, but he’s always favoured his sons. Tracy should have saved that ornament she obliterated Charlie with – it would’ve come in useful.

Love is on Liz’s mind as she tells Jim she wants to give their relationship another go. She’ll never learn. Will she discover Jim has been in on the con, and what does Hannah have up her sleeve (another egg-yolk-yellow ensemble, matching last week’s sweater)? Talking of costumes, the insight into Liz’s wardrobe yesterday was hysterical. As for Jack P Shepherd’s speech on Monday – genius. Writing and acting.