Coronation Street

This is a great summary (or should I say thorough account) of the changes in Corrie in the late 80s, early 90s:

http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/spaces-of-television/2013/04/17/plot-inflation-in-greater-weatherfield-coronation-street-in-the-1990s/

I guess they had to react to EastEnders as well. That blog is a great read.

Well the earlier episodes we saw on ITV3 did look quite badly dated, let's be honest. It was miles behind where EastEnders and Brookside were at the time in terms of how it looked on screen.

I noticed quite a bit of flickering and momentary lines on the screen during the first episode shown last Tuesday (the episode originally shown 17th November 89). Nothing too bad, so I assume the 8th December episode is somewhat worse.

As for the “strange sounds” you mention, is it a kind of “buzzing fly” noise? I’ve noticed that recently, particularly in the scenes shot in Mike’s flat (which I assume is too far away for the building site sounds to be audible).

I posted a video of said scene in this thread a few months back, here it is again:



I wonder if ITV3 will leave this scene in tomorrow or cut it out... or maybe they'll have found a copy without the damage?

Interesting reading that article anyway, about how the move to using the portable video cameras enabled them to do a lot more work on location, even short inconsequential scenes it would have been a lot more hassle to do on location using film. I imagine even the videotaped location work from the 60s and 70s would have taken a fair bit of effort to do as well, needing big cameras presumably cabled up to an OB van and I could imagine would have been even more hassle than the 16mm equipment in some situations.

One thing as well is even though these days there's a lot more location work than there was even in 1989, they seem to rarely leave the confines of the outdoor set, whereas watching in 1989 we get regular scenes in places like Bettabuy, Wendy Crozier's house and the Quays around where Mike supposedly lives. It's all too insular these days even if it is a lot less studio bound.

Well the tape damage there is no worse than what I saw in the November episode referred to above. In fact, the damage spans several scenes in the other episode. As for the noise - that’s not the sound I’ve been hearing, and I would say it’s definitely meant to be drills from the building site.

Over the last few years there has been a tendency to introduce more buildings/businesses in the direct vicinity of Coronation Street, such as the health centre, the Bistro, the kebab shop, and going back further Roy’s Rolls and The (new) Kabin. Previously such places were located further away. Also we rarely see the homes of regulars who live some distance from the street, such as Audrey.

Its been some years now since we saw 5 Grasmere Drive. Izzy lives at 28 Grayling Street, and although we saw inside of her house during a storyline last year or the year before, we never saw the outside. IIRC its only ever been seen once. When Betty Turpin died a few years back they used a real house for the interior of 37 Hillside Crescent, which bore no resemblance at all to the set interior we saw frequently through the 70s, 80s and 90s. During the 80s we also had Gail and Bryan living in Buxton Close, and in the early days Martha Longhurst and Len Fairclough on Mawdsley Street.

Only recent examples are Kayla, who of course is only a guest character and we don't see inside of her house frequently. It was just for the purposes of the storyline. Shame really.

Leanne and Toyah went to view a flat on Tile Street last week - though of course we never saw it exterior or interior.

Edit Having said that, 37 Hillside Crescent changes appearance entirely between 1979 and 1995, by 1995 the staircase wasn't in the same room as the hallway and instead was on the opposite side of the house in a separate room. There also was no longer access to the kitchen from the living room.

Do Sarah and Bethany live in Nick's old place or is that where Johnny and Jenny are now? Sarah and Bethany seem to spend more time in David's home presumably because the set hasn't been built.

No. 8 (Nick's old flat) is now where Sarah, Bethany, Gary and Harry live.
No. 9 is where Michelle, Robert, Ali and Ryan live.
No. 12 is where Jenny and Johnny live.

There's already been a few video flicks on the transmitted copy of the 8/12/1989 episode on ITV3.

Waiting to see if there's edits for language following TAAARTgate: interestingly, we've had B-bombs of the male and female type from Mike Baldwin left intact in recent shows.

The tape's probably damaged from being dug out so often from all the times they've shown the tram clip