I had meant to post about this back at the end of August when I actually saw 'The Road To Coronation Street', but I would passionately urge anyone who is a fan of Corrie to watch/record this film. I was lucky enough to attend a preview screening in Edinburgh. The whole enterprise is a marvel from top to toe. David Dawson plays Tony Warren, the writer who created 'Coronation Street', and is in almost every scene , so the piece would fail unless he delivers the star-making turn that he does. You can't take your eyes of him, and he's infuriating, hilarious and moving in equal measure. Jessie Wallace is astonishingly convincing as Pat Phoenix, Celia Imrie is a joy as Annie Walker and Lynda Baron arrives late to steal the show as Ena Sharples. They've managed to recreate late '50s/early '60s Granadaland beautifully, on a meagre BBC4 budget. The writer, Daran Little (former Corrie scripter and archivist) does an excellent job of blending joyous natural humour with moving drama - in the tradition of the finest episodes of the soap itself. At the end of the screening I was in tears, along with the dozen or so other people at the screening, and I still don't really know why. It's a drama about the making of a soap right? But it plays more as a 'star-is-born' kind of story (in fact the original title of the film was 'Coronation Street: A Star Is Born'). It's about a young man at the bottom of the rung, failed writer/actor, going nowhere fast, who, through bloody-mindedness and genius talent, created the most popular and longest running serial drama in the world. It may also be because the end titles consist of a sublime orchestral rendition of the show's theme tune playing over simple original stills of all the main characters we've just seen, most now dead.
It's astonishing that it was filmed in just a couple of weeks back in June this year. The director, Charles Sturridge (who did 'Brideshead Revisited) introduced this preview screening. He said he began his career directing 'Coronation Street' so he knew and loved these people he was depicting on screen (even Ken!). Perhaps that was why it was so moving. It was a film made with genuine love and affection, by people who know and love the show. He also said they had finished the sound mix on the previous Wednesday, done the 'prints' on Thursday and Friday, and had it couriered up to Edinburgh for this last-minute Saturday lunchtime screening. We were the first people to view the film, other than the people responsible for it. Amazingly, Tony Warren was also in attendance (he's now 73) and it was the first time he'd seen it. But
best of all was the fact that Katherine Kelly (Becky) was there for the showing. Her and some mates slipped in unannounced at the last minute and sat up the back. Starstruck dreams - sharing a back row with Becky MacDonald!
She laughed like a drain all the way through.
So, yeah,
Do Not Miss This!
