The television institution has held on to a unique identity across six decades
In the Coronation Street writers’ room at Granada Studios, a magnificent black and white photograph of Ena Sharples used to adorn the wall. Wearing her signature hairnet, the legendary denizen of the Rovers Return snug is looking out at grimy 1960s Manchester. According to the onetime scriptwriter, Frank Cotterell Boyce, someone wrote a caption for it: “When I was a lass there was Coronation St, Inkerman Street, the Red Rec. And the rest of the world was all talk.”
Coronation Street, which turned 60 this week, has always been parochial in the best sense of the word. The fictional northern town of Weatherfield is a community unto itself, and storylines seldom stray beyond its borders into real-life Manchester. Instead, the myriad crises and dilemmas posed by changing times come to the street. Against the familiar backdrop of terraced houses, the corner shop and the Rovers, they have all been dealt with, one way or another. However complicated and unpredictable life is, in Weatherfield almost anything can be sorted out over a cup of tea, a pint or, in Ken Barlow’s case, a half.
