The Road to Coronation Street: Now 100% Florizel Free!

PLANET NORTH

"The Road to Coronation Street”
16/09/2010
BBC Four

Often it’s not the end product that’s interesting so much as the process that gives rise to it. Anyone who’s watched ‘making of’ documentaries or heard a decent DVD commentary may have noticed this. Once you’ve seen all the effort and hard work those goes into the end product, it seems much less exciting and interesting in comparison.

Such is the case with ‘The Road to Coronation Street’, a drama from ITV broadcast – confusingly – on BBC4 last night. (But more on that later.) This tells of how Street creator and writer Tony Warren fought, often tooth and nail, to get the UK’s longest running soap onto our screens. As drama goes, it is concise, focussed, well structured and flowing, with some great dialogue and characterisation. Which is to say, this story about how UK soaps came into being is much more fun than the soaps themselves these days.

The cast certainly helps. David Dawson plays Tony Warren as a sort of souped-up, gayed-out, speed riddled Ken Barlow on a mission. (The ‘real’ Ken Barlow, or William Roache, is meanwhile played with a sort of delusional ‘I’m too good for this’ pathos by his son, James.)

Elsewhere, Jessie Wallace (yes, ‘er from Eastenders) camps it up with brassy glee as Pat Phoenix, the audition scene between her and Dawson crackling with electricity. Meanwhile, surfacing as a sort of everyman amongst the carnival of elephantine egos is director Derek Bennet, played with both humanity and normality by Shaun Dooley.

And then, in the final act of the drama, comes along Lynda Baron, rumbling into view with a Godzilla-like presence as Violet Carson, invoking the spirit of Ena Sharples with harridan vigour and resigned fatalism in equal measure.

The story itself is a good balance of drama and fact, taking obvious liberties with the events and participants whilst not obscuring them with too much schmaltz. (Though some of the Pat Phoenix scenes do slap it on with a trowel.) The simmering professional, class and personal tensions are well depicted too, being reined in enough to not obscure the drama, but shocking enough when they do surface.

For it's telling that back in 1960, the thought of northern plebs played by northern thesps was seen as too radical and not commercial enough. This thinking remains, but has merely moved onto other pariahs who are seen as the kiss of death, unless they’re splayed out for all to see on sleazy reality TV.

And it’s telling too where this excellent drama was shown. Made by ITV Studios for the BBC, it was shown on BBC 4, light years away from the mass market ITV1 and BBC 1& 2 schedules. Almost in spite of itself, ‘The Road to Coronation Street’ leaves us wondering whether a modern Tony Warren would even get a twitch of an eyebrow from the fickle powers that be, convinced as they are that they, and they alone, know what the public wants.

BARLOWNESS: 8/10