DVD Review: “Coronation Street”

“Coronation St.: The Best of the 1970s” (Shock, PG: Contains Violence)

Early 1970s Coronation St. was the first adult television I ever watched and I still think it ranks right up there with the best the medium has ever produced.  This 7 disk box set compilation proves it.  While there is a disappointing absence of extras and problems inherent in presenting discrete episodes rather than a number in sequence, the lack of completed story arcs is almost compensated for by the excellence of individual shows.  The second episode from 1970, for example, one of only two in black in white, might have a cliff hanger ending that is not resolved, but it is incredibly tense nonetheless, concluding with Minnie Caldwell (always my favourite character) having a gun pulled on her by her crazy American ex-border.

If Stan and Hilda Ogden were the working class heart of the series, the only television couple whom Laurence Olivier regretted never working with, the geriatric trio of Caldwell, Ena Sharples and Albert Tatlock were it curmudgeonly soul.  What always separated Coronation St from rival soaps like the depressingly one note East Enders was its humour, whether it be Annie Walker’s ridiculous delusions of grandeur, Bet Lynch’s sassy one liners or Emily Nugent’s quivering repression.  Equally impressive is the deep voiced sensuality of Elsie Tanner, a kind of world weary vulnerability that always rings true.  The term ’soap opera’ is hopelessly inadequate when it comes to material of this calibre: it is art, pure and simple.

4 1/2 / 5

Richard Swainson