Coronation Street

Bet's 2002 return was ok at first for Betty's retirement (another occasion that she didn't actually retire!) but it should have been just left at a one off appearance. But the only reason they had Betty plan to retire anyway was to get Bet back. Betty also retired after the Rovers fire of 1986 and was replaced by Sally but Betty was asked to return as Sally couldn't cope with the cooking. I was surprised that so many people on the Digital Spy Classic Corrie discussion seem to hate Betty! I liked her a lot, she didn't suffer fools gladly but she was a lovely person, who knows what they would say about 60s Corrie with Ena Sharples.

Id love Mavis to return - Rita and Mavis were a brilliant double act. As you say Thelma has been quite critical about modern Corrie and said she wishes she had quit years earlier. As soon as Peter Baldwin was axed she quit.

Oh well today was the end of an era and the beginning of the end for Classic Corrie. From 1997 it truly was modern Corrie.

The most baffling thing about the mid-90s Corrie was how Don Brennan turned from a genial character into a murdering psychopath. Even living with Ivy wouldn’t do that to you! Turning him into this really odd character was really the template they’ve used for all the mass murderers and psychos that have roamed the Street ever since.

Yes! A classic Corrie moment. Watched that scene many times back in the day. It was on the intro to The Cruise feature length special VHS.

Don’s decline into being a menace seemed fairly gradual to me as various life events made him slowly more and more bitter.

They’ve obviously tried to do the same recently with Gary Windass, but his transformation from ineffectual streak-of-p*ss who one minute couldn’t get the better of a fat, old scouser, into a terrifying, murderous gangster, the next, seems a bit less plausible.

Didn't Don Brennan and Mad Mayah have literally the same death? Car crash into the viaduct, just 7 years apart.

Mad Maya didn't die (though the crash was the last time we saw her).

To be fair, the street used to continue under the railway arch at that point until it got bricked up. Perhaps Don and Maya were just following their sat-navs.

I remember watching today's second episode first time round well, the first repeat of it anyway)- I'd just discovered via tuning around on the TV that we could get Tyne Tees through our aerial, and I saw the afternoon repeat of this episode via that (which according to https://coronationstreet.fandom.com/wiki/Omnibus_repeats_on_Tyne_Tees_Television_in_1995 would have been at 12:55 on the 23rd October).

IIRC didn't Don end up owing Mike Baldwin a large sum of money from a poker game. I can't remember the amount but I think it was a few thousand pound. I believe this started Don on a downward spiral.

G

To be honest there was always something about Don I didn't quite take to right from the start.

Tomorrows first episode on ITV3 will have scenes filmed around the outside of Granada near Great John Street Hotel which used to be called the old school where the cast used to socialise in the 80s and 90s. Lynne Perrie spoke about this in her autobiography.

Its a shame they didn't give Raquel a chance to be landlady but Sarah Lancashire leaves the show about a year from now (in real time not ITV3 time) so maybe they knew she wasn't going to stay around.

Betty worried about the Rovers closing because of her wedding reception. They obviously forgotten she was supposed to own the Rovers, after she died it came out that Annie Walker had left her the pub Of course this was a totally ridiculous rewrite as Annie Walker never owned to pub it always belonged to Newton and Ridley.

A co-incidence of scheduling would have put the hour long Emmerdale episode of 18/7/96 as the second episode on the same day as the hour long Corrie of 8/12/95 on Thursday the 18th June. It seems ITV3's policy is when an hour long episode falls as the second episode of the day, they only show one episode of the other soap to balance it out, but as that one episode of Corrie would also be an hour long one, it looks like they're only showing one Emmerdale that day, so we will only get 90 minutes of Corrie & Emmerdale that day, rather than the 2 hours we normally get, or the 2 1/2 hours that would have had to show if they'd had both the hour long Corrie and Emmerdale (as well as the half-hour 16/7/96 edition) that day.

Really enjoyed Classic Corrie this week, be interesting to see if 1996 will be as bad as I remembered, we will be there in a few weeks. I'm happy the Duckworths got the Rovers over Liz and Jim, so I am. I cant think of anyone worse than Jim as landlord!