The world's longest-running television series is back on top, thanks to a killer storyline. Shane Hegarty on the soap that just won't die
In January of last year, the team responsible for Coronation Street - scriptwriters, producers, its creator Tony Warren - met at a hotel in Chester to decide the future of the soap. The programme that liked to believe it was Britain's favourite was in big trouble and they needed to figure out a way to save it.
It was getting left behind in the ratings. It was overloaded with characters, many of whom the viewers didn't care about. Its storylines swung between dull and ridiculous. Only a few months earlier, the annual soap awards had dished out gongs galore to EastEnders, but none to Coronation Street. A sequence of producers had been brought in to sort out the problems and had wielded the axe on the cast, before finally being axed themselves. With the arrival of another new executive producer, Carolyn Reynolds, the press rippled with rumours of a bloodbath on the Street that would cull characters and boost ratings.
Well, one serial killer later, the plan seems to have worked a treat. Last Monday night, 19.4 million viewers in Britain tuned in to see Richard Hillman finally confess all to wife Gail. They are numbers almost unheard of in this multi-channel age. It was five million more than watched the most popular episode of 2002, and three million more than watched the most-watched show of all of last year: Christmas Day's Only Fools and Horses. In Ireland, 800,000 watched it on TV3, making it the highest-rated programme in the station's brief history. When its credits rolled, the British National Grid recorded a power surge equivalent to 450,000 kettles being switched on at the same time.
Coronation Street is the creation of Tony Warren, who at age 19 wrote a script, Where No Birds Sing, about a northern city back street. A year later he wrote a comedy, Our Street, which he sent to BBC Leeds, but received no reply. Later, as a 23-year-old Granada staff writer bored of adapting Biggles books, he persuaded his bosses to let him write a series. Although a middle-class child, he drew from the experiences of his grandmother's upbringing in inner-city Salford and wrote the opening episodes of what was first called Florizel Street, almost re-named Jubilee Street, but finally baptised Coronation Street.
The first episode was aired at 7 p.m. on December 9th, 1960, even though its 22 cast members had only started rehearsals four days previously. In the following day's Daily Mirror, the television critic declared: "The programme is doomed from the outset with its dreary signature tune and grim scene of terraced houses and smoking chimneys." He was wrong, of course. Originally commissioned to run for 16 episodes over eight weeks, it was extended indefinitely and by October 1961 was Britain's top-rated programme.
Due to lack of available studio time, the first Friday night episodes were broadcast live, with the cast hanging on afterwards to record Monday night's episode in a single take. "Once your scene finished you froze," recalls William Roache, who as Ken Barlow is the show's only surviving original cast member. "You couldn't cough or anything, it was the most terrifying ordeal."
Its first few years were very much concerned with continuing the kitchen sink drama, and observing the minutiae of working-class life. It was a direct descendant of Dickens's popular serials of a century before it, mixing gripping plot and social awareness. The early black-and-white broadcasts, especially, seemed to emphasise the leaden sky, industrial skyline and grimy cobbles. "We did an entire episode on the Malthus population theory," says writer John Finch. "They wouldn't do that now."
However, it had its troughs. The late 1960s into the mid-1970s were a fallow period for the soap, with poor plots and weak writing, before it emerged into the classic era that continued until the end of the 1980s. Characters such as Bet Lynch, Jack and Vera Duckworth and Elsie Tanner became national institutions. The writing was masterful, crackling with one-liners. Its comedy was as strong as its drama, with a cast capable of handling both. For years the bickering Hilda and Stan Ogden may have been light entertainment, but it was actress Jean Alexander's heart-wrenching performance after Stan's death for which she will always be remembered. Ratings peaked in 1983, when 29 million viewers tuned in to watch Deirdre Barlow decide between husband Ken and lover Mike Baldwin. Its popularity was such that, during the Manchester United v Wolves game at Old Trafford that night, the scoreboard flashed up "She's staying" at half-time.
Yet for all its success, the seeds of uncertainty were being sown. The setting began to look anachronistic, a representation of Britain being swept away during the Thatcher years. Established characters were dying off. Meanwhile, the BBC's new London-set soap, EastEnders, brought aggressive, story-led drama, as well as a social realism that was draining away from Coronation Street. Christmas Day 1986 was to prove a watershed. While the Coronation Street cast gathered around the piano for an old-fashioned sing-song in the Rovers, Den and Angie Watts were engaged in a battle royal in the Queen Vic and the viewers made it clear which they preferred. Half the UK population tuned in to EastEnders that night.
It was a seismic shock to the Coronation Street producers, one it can be argued they have never quite got over. The soap began to lose its traditional focus on character, and move towards story instead. Although much of its charm lay in it being a community somewhat out of time, with characters to match, it meant that sensational storylines seemed incongruous, while slower ones could often be tedious. As it began airing four nights a week, the pressure on storylines grew. Where once they had developed organically, now they often seemed grafted on. Plots such as Toyah Battersby's rape were condemned as gratuitous attempts to bolster the ratings. High points - such as Deirdre Barlow going to jail or Raquel leaving binman Curly Watts - were brief stops to an overall decline. Veteran actors left, mumbling about the show's standards. Some were brought back, like street brasser Bet Lynch, but left quickly again. New characters came and went with the different producers. Meanwhile, EastEnders steamed ahead, with plots climaxing on an almost nightly basis and a mix of humour and drama that was once the trademark of its northern rival.
At that Chester meeting, they apparently agreed that the soap needed to return to character-led plots, that stories needed to be paced, that they shouldn't burn bright but briefly. The current storyline may be just another ratings blip, but it may also be the beginning of a new golden period for the soap. One can once again imagine turning on the television set 40 years from now, and hearing the "dreary signature tune" and seeing the "grim scene of terraced houses and smoking chimneys" and settling down for half an hour with a community long out of time, but with characters that seem ageless.