The Road to Corrie - a post modern soapfest

If any Coronation Street fans missed this 50th birthday tribute drama, I recommend it. I also recommend it to anyone who doesn't watch Coronation Street. It was class stuff (working class of course). I haven't even watched soaps for years, but we all know the original Corrie icons. It made my head swim, though, with all the cross referencing going on.

For a start, it was an ITV Studios (Granada) production but made for BBC4 (huh?) That might explain the subtle dig at not pandering to advertisers, and slipping a reference in about The Archers having an even longer life than Corrie.

It was written by a scriptwriter for Corrie who has since jumped ship to Eastenders.

Pat Pheonix was played by Jessie Wallace, which is about the most genius piece of casting I can remember seeing for some time. Worth watching just for that.

William Roache was played by his own son, who I believe played his real life grandson in Coronation Street for real. Or something.

The whole point of Coronation Street was to show everyday people in everyday houses in their everyday clothes ('we don't have any clothes, we only do costumes'). But this re-creation was quite the opposite - a carefully constructed period piece. That world is long gone.

Most of the supporting cast had been in Corrie themselves, though if you're an actor from that region, a part in Corrie's probably guaranteed at some point. Or they'd been in 'Enders. Or Casualty, and possibly a combination of all three.

By the end credits, when the real actors' names appeared by the photos of the real people they'd been acting, I felt like I'd been sucked down some vortex where all the TV dramas on all the channels had been stuck in a giant blender. Fabulous fun.

It will be shown again (about a dozen times knowing BBC4) and I believe you should watch it.

I recorded it and look forward to watching it, perhaps tonight. I dip in and out of Corrie but have followed it since my childhood.

Whether you love it or hate it, Corrie is a veritable national institution, an icon of the 20th (and now 21st) century. A friend of mine was a scriptwriter for Corrie so I had the pleasure of hearing lots and lots of inside gossip.

I watched this, thought it was great, im glad they did change the original actress they had picked to play Ena Sharples to Violet Carson.

Oh and i thought Jessie Wallace played Pat Phoneix brilliantly.

It reminded me of that experiment a few years back on ITV, they set up a mock soap that was like Hollyoaks with surfing, but had a parallel comedy series about the making of it, so you watched all the backstage kerfuffle and casting nightmares and script rewrites, then later in the evening saw the finished episode. It didn't really work, because the making-of programme was far more interesting.

This could be a whole new genre. I want Channel Four to commission the making of Eldorado. That was a saga and a half.

I watched it this evening, it was excellent and good to see some of the oldies who had actually had roles in Corrie (for example, Michelle Holmes) in this production. Agreed, Jessie Wallace was inspired.

I think it would have been great if say, Betty Driver (Betty Turpin) had been cast to play Violet Carson, but hey ho, Linda Baron was brilliant, although I can never see her without thinking of her as Arkwright's love interest, with that enormous bosom, in Open All Hours.

Was William Roache really like that or was this a bit of a send up of his onscreen character? Amusing given what we now know.

I've just finished watching it on iPlayer....it was excellent. As has been said, Jessie Wallace as Pat Pheonix was bang on the money and Linda Baron played Violet Carson brilliantly.