Coronation Street: Hilda Ogden, the room and the viewer.

  

 For Thomas Berger, the ontology of television’s representation of space revolved around its depiction of rooms:

 One of the things it [television] is is rooms. It is the squad room of Hill Street Blues and You’ll Never Get Rich: It is the flight deck of the starship Enterprise; It is the Long Branch Saloon of Gunsmoke; It is the tent of Hawkeye Pierce: it is the barroom of Cheers; and it is the composite living room of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Rob and Laura Petrie, and Cliff and Claire Huxtable. But most of all it is the kitchen of Ralph and Alice Kramden. (1989: 238)

 Although the programmes cited are American, any equivalent list for British drama and comedy of the same period would include similar interior locations familiar to regular television viewers; living rooms, workplaces and pubs. The episodic nature of much television fiction and comedy trained the viewer to understand characters through the rooms that they inhabited, to the greatest extent in soap operas, where audiences form emotional attachments to characters who spend decades in the same houses. This familiarity encouraged sophisticated readings (even if largely unconscious ones) of character, situation and programmes themselves on the part of soap opera viewers, as demonstrated in Dorothy Hobson’s pioneering study of the Crossroads (ATV/Central for ITV, 1964-88) audience:

 One woman commented that it was about time that Kath Brownlow had a new three-piece suite because the one which she had was getting old to look at, and she added the comment, ‘She will be able to when she’s having the digs money off Kevin.’ (…) She knew that a woman of Kath’s class would not be content with the old three-piece suite which the production tolerated. It was a nice example of the realism in the woman’s experience being in conflict with the reality of the budget which constrained the production from buying Kath a new suite. (1982: 129)

 This article examines the representation of space in soap opera, presenting examples of three recurrent tropes that derived emotional resonance from the space of the familiar room. I shall examine the use of these tropes through the depiction of one long-running (1964-87) Coronation Street (Granada for ITV 1960-present) character, Hilda Ogden (Jean Alexander), explaining some of the ways in which her character was understood through the spaces of the drama.

 As a drama almost entirely predicated around interiors rather than exteriors, 1970s Coronation Street forms an ideal case study for understanding the studio space in television drama. Although live transmission ceased a few months into the programme’s run in 1961, the series was still being recorded ‘as live’ with no opportunity for postproduction up until the mid 1970s. Use of filmed inserts was minimal and generally used for exterior scenes in the Street, rather than for locations further afield. The purpose-built Coronation Street exterior set familiar to present-day viewers was not opened until 1983 (Podmore, 1990: 63).

 Hilda Ogden has a real claim to be the most popular fictional character in the history of British television. The character remains remarkably well remembered to this day, having been voted the greatest ever soap opera character by readers of the Radio Times in 2004, a full 17 years after the character left the series.[1] Jean Alexander’s performance as Hilda was also recognised within the TV industry, winning a Royal Television Society award for best actress in 1985, and nominated for a BAFTA in 1987. Such recognition for a soap performer was unique in the twentieth century, and is still exceptionally rare in the present day.

 Hilda Ogden served (at least) four narrative purposes within Coronation Street, all of which define the character by her relationship to other people; as a long-suffering housewife, married to Stan (Bernard Youens), a slobby and workshy husband; mother to two grown-up and generally unsupportive children[2]; cleaner of the Rovers Return and other peoples’ homes; and general gossip and busybody.

 The character of Hilda generally operated within a comic register, regularly seen in curlers, headscarf, pinny, brandishing a mop and smoking, an iconic image that lodged in the memories even of non-viewers,[3] often speaking in non-sequiters (“Drop dead, Stan! And then get up and do it again!”) and malapropisms (“No one can say that my Stanley has been corseted”).

 Studio television drama was a form that was primary located in the room. For Raymond Williams, this created a form of television drama that bore strong affinities to the naturalist theatre of the nineteenth century, particularly the plays of Ibsen, in which the environment of the room comments upon the situation of the characters:

 [T]he room is there, not as one scenic convention among all the possible others, but because it is an actively shaping environment - the particular structure within which we live ... the solid form, the conventional declaration, of how we are living and what we value. The room on the stage ... [is] a set that defines us and can trap us: the alienated object that now represents us in the world. (Williams, 1989: 12)

 Writing about Upstairs Downstairs, Helen Wheatley describes how within studio television drama the room could function as "an eloquent and expressive space that is permeated with meaning; as a structure it is declamatory and active". (2005: 145-6)

 An acute form of understanding of the room within studio drama, was held by viewers of Coronation Street, where the same rooms have been seen by the long-term audience for decades, most often watched from within the space of their own living rooms, the accumulated emotional resonances of the two spaces reflecting back upon each other.

 Three recurrent visual tropes dominate Coronation Street’s presentation of the domestic room, which we briefly outline before identifying instances when each of these tropes occur in the story of Hilda Ogden.

Retreat: The room as an intimate and private space.

 This occurs frequently in Coronation Street, most often in stories of heartbroken middle-aged women “who put up a tough front in public, before closing their front door, drinking vodka and sobbing until thick rivulets of mascara flood down their faces and the closing titles begin to roll” (Dent, 2005). This image is often presented in the narrative in contrast with the character having put on a brave face to the exterior world, especially in the public space of the Rovers Return, before collapsing when finally alone at home, a familiar rhythm of emotional composure and eventual release recognised and shared by the viewer to cathartic effect.

 This convention is illustrated by Elsie Tanner (Patricia Phoenix), seen alone on New Years Eve (2061, 31 December 1980) at a dimly lit 11 Coronation Street (Figure 1), distressed by her grandson’s departure. The unhappiness of Elsie’s situation is presented in juxtaposition with other scenes of revelry at the Rovers Return, and in counterpoint to the offstage bells of Weatherfield, chiming in 1981.

 

Disruption: The room as a space that can be violated.

 As the room is understood by the viewer to be a space of sanctuary, by the same coin it can also function a space that can be disrupted or violated, frequently through the presence of unwelcome guests and relatives. The convention is illustrated here (2) in its most extreme form, as Elsie discovers that her home has been broken into by the angry wife of a man with whom she has had a one-night stand, and that all of her clothes, her most prized possessions, have been slashed (2095, 29 April 1981).

 This trope of the violated space just as often takes a comic form, as often seen through Stan and Hilda Ogden.

The room as a space of memory.

 

 Figure 3 (1647, 27 October 1976) shows a Chekhovian moment where Ena Sharples (Violet Carson) is left alone in the home of her old friend Minnie Caldwell (Margot Bryant) at No. 5 Coronation Street, after Minnie has decided to leave the street for good and the house is about to be sold. Such overt uses of the room as a space of memory are infrequent, usually seen when characters depart or return. But a sense of memory is encoded into the familiar space of the room, seen in properties such as the photographs of relatives seen on mantelpieces, but also in the accrued décor and visual style of the rooms in Coronation Street.

Hilda Ogden and the room

 How the character of Hilda Ogden was seen by others, how she perceived herself, and what she aspired to be, were all mediated through the space of the room in Coronation Street, a role encapsulated by Hobson:  “Hilda Ogden scrubbed, cleaned and kept other people’s property clean, and she longed to be seen as ‘respectable’ herself.”  (2003: 108) This tension between aspiration and shabby reality, can be seen right from Hilda’s very first appearance in Coronation Street (episode 381, 08 July 1964, Figures 4 and 5)

 

 The scene only lasts ten seconds but a sequence of four events establish how the next twenty years of scenes within this house are going to operate in Coronation Street. Firstly, Hilda initially appears emerging from underneath the sink, the unexpected angle defining the character through the space in an expressionist style. Secondly, Hilda derives sensual pleasure and sense of worth from the space (“Ooh Stanley, look! We’ve got two taps!”), before nemesis immediately follows hubris when one of the taps fails to work. Finally, Stan laughs at Hilda, establishing their relationship through the different value that each derives from their domestic environment.

 This narrative pattern is frequently repeated in the series on a grander scale through more substantial plots and more striking motifs than the taps, continually generating misunderstanding and conflict between Stan and Hilda. For example, in one plot Hilda expresses her desire for a serving hatch in the home. Stan thinks that he obliges her by building a vast serving hatch, much larger than in any other home in the street, but unfortunately he builds it in between the living room and hall, rather than the kitchen (episode 1116, 27 September 1971).

 Hilda’s desire for respectability through redecoration is synonymous with one interior feature of the Ogden’s room – the large scale decoration of a mural, or as she calls it, ‘muriel’.

 When the ‘muriel’ is first unveiled (Figure 6, episode 1617, 14 July 1976) Hilda is clearly pleased with the effect of her new feature, but the reactions of her tea guests Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear) and (especially) Annie Walker (Doris Speed), the refined landlady of the Rovers Return, tell a different story. The pleasure that the viewer derives from this scene incorporates the theatrical convention of observing events through the invisible fourth wall, with a heightened artifice in performance stemming from the implausibility of Annie Walker not immediately noticing the feature when first entering the room, building a comic tension when asked to turn around and face the ‘muriel’, with Annie politely asking to look away from it (“Oh my word Mrs Ogden! Do you know, dear, I feel just a little giddy? Would you mind if I sat facing the other way until I’m acclimatised?”).

 Having established such a memorable feature, Coronation Street went on to exploit the dramatic potential of the ‘muriel’ in many narratives, incorporating all three recurring visual tropes that we have outlined. A humorous example of violation of space that focuses on the ‘muriel’ occurs in a comic strip sequence (episode 1684, 7 March 1977) that depends upon the cognitive connection formed by viewers between rooftop exterior and domestic interior scenes. In the mistaken belief that she’s cleaning Elsie Tanner’s chimney, Suzie Burchill (Cheryl Murray) drops a brick into the fireplace of the Ogdens’ room, causing a cloud of soot to ruin Stan’s tea, although Hilda is much more upset by the despoiling of the ‘muriel’ than her husband’s discomfort.[4]

 Even fifteen years after Hilda left the series, viewers’ memory of the feature of the ‘muriel’, and through it the character of Hilda, could still be triggered, in an archaeological storyline when a decorator working for subsequent owners the Websters uncovers the ‘muriel’ when stripping wallpaper.

 Disputes between Hilda and Stan were one of the most popular regular features of Coronation Street in the 1970s, with lodger Eddie Yeats (Geoffrey Hughes) often mediating between husband and wife. The ways in which the room could be disrupted dreamt up by the scriptwriters became ever more ingenious and bizarre; an argument about pigeons entering the roof through loose slates culminates with an episode (1781, 8 February 1978) where a stuck Suzie Burchill’s leg through the Ogden’s ceiling creates contesting claims over damages between the ceiling and the leg; or the house becoming invaded by chickens, a money-making scheme of Stan’s pursued in Hilda’s absence (episode 1900, 4 April 1979).

 The way that comedy derived from the Ogden’s room was even-handed, where either Stan or Hilda could be the object of the joke. In episode 1867 (6 December 1978) the laugh is clearly on Stan, who arranges to look after a fruit machine, unwisely feeds it with all his savings and Hilda’s housekeeping money, and cannot get rid of it until it pays out, the incongruous contraption dominating the living room, obscuring the ‘muriel’ and, eventually, swallowing all of the electricity for heat and light.

 While the comic downfall of Stan in the home frequently derives from his susceptibility to ill thought-through get-rich schemes, it is Hilda’s desire for respectability that often causes her to be presented as ridiculous. Episode 1264 (26 February 1973) is mostly devoted to such a comic plot, in which she invites her neighbours to what she believes to a sophisticated cocktail party at No. 13, and treats them to a display of ballroom dancing. The comedy in such plots is drawn as much from details of mise-en-scene (Hilda’s costume, wig and false eyelashes, outsized even by early 1970s standards, and properties such as her approximation of quail’s eggs in aspic, hard-boiled eggs in lemon jelly) as it is through the contrasting expectations and behaviour of husband and wife. Figure 7 illustrates the potential range of inappropriate comic responses that Hilda’s social pretensions can draw from a large ensemble cast; derision (the three standing women), polite embarrassment (the two men on the right), and senile bewilderment (Minnie Caldwell, seated).

 How Hilda reacted to her own domestic room affected in turn her responses to other spaces. This understanding added a level of complexity and depth to the viewer’s understanding of scenes when Hilda visited other rooms, particularly the sense of pleasure and yearning that she derived from beautiful and orderly places, such as when employed as cleaner for factory owner Mike Baldwin’s (Johnny Briggs) flat.

Coronation Street Episode 1756 (14 November 1977 w. Leslie Duxbury d. Jonathan Wright Miller). (“Hilda and Stan Ogden arrive at a posh hotel for a "Second Honeymoon" competition prize” TV Times, 11 November 1977)

 This sense of Hilda’s aspirations becoming shown when placing the character in unfamiliar rooms is seen in operation in this exceptional (and very well-remembered) episode, in which the Ogdens stay at a luxury hotel (having won a newspaper competition for being Weatherfield’s most happily married couple). Hobson explains that, “it was the sheer luxury and respectability of the hotel, and the fact she was part of it, even for a short time, which gave her [Hilda] such pleasure.” (2003: 108).

 Construction of a new studio set for limited use in one or two Coronation Street episodes was a very rare occurrence, with scenes set away from the Street and its associated workplaces usually recorded on film on location in order to save studio space and costs (Smart, 2014: 74-5). In order to extract maximum dramatic value from the Suite No. 504 set, 17 of the episode’s 25 minutes happen within the room, shown in four scenes of between three and five minutes. The second of these hotel sequences runs for five minutes, recorded with three cameras and told in thirty shots.

 The scene functions dramatically through showing and contrasting Hilda and Stan’s incompatible understandings of space alongside each other. Hilda is introduced in harmony with the space, framed in the doorway of the en suite bathroom and declaring, “Do you know what? I’d be quite happy to spend the next 24 hours in that bathroom. Its perfect!” with Jean Alexander’s eye line sharing the viewer’s observation of the vase of flowers placed in the foreground of the picture (Figure 8). Her journey across the room is shown in one fluid shot, a movement in which both the camera motion and the performer pause at the same moment before taking one final step, preparing the viewer in advance for the next shot when they learn what disrupts Hilda’s reverie. 

 Figure 8

Figure 9

 It is, of course, Stan (Figure 9) placed (within both the frame and the space) in defiance of the room, rather than at harmony within it. This is seen in a static wide shot that allows Stan to impose himself upon the space where Hilda responds to it, drawing attention to his posture (slouched), costume (dishevelled - in an earlier scene he has complained to Hilda, “This top button’s choking me!”), properties (the cigarette) and activity (watching television).

 The television acts as a catalyst for the subsequent discussion between husband and wife, its significance within the scene such that it is afforded a brief shot of its own. In a witty meta-textual touch, the colour screen watched intently by Stan is playing a luxurious romantic sequence (of a clinching couple on a beautiful bed) such as the Ogdens are not experiencing themselves. Despite Stan’s protests (“It’s different in colour!”) Hilda switches the set off. When Stan asks what else there is to do, Hilda makes a pass at him (“Second honeymoon, Stanley”), which Stan fails to register. Defeated, Hilda sits down and ruefully reflects on marriage (“What happens to a fella when he’s marries? […] It’s just as though somebody had switched him off. Like a bicycle tyre what’s gone flat.”). Stan’s response (“You get comfy, don’t you?”) emphasises the little importance that he attaches to smartness and appearance (“Show your braces if you want to, throw the Brylcreem away, too”).

 This sequence, with Stan and Hilda facing each other, is shown via two cameras in a simple back and forth sequence. Each performer is shown from the other’s POV, either in close-up or seated in mid-shot. Each of these four shots is telling, working as a visual contrast to the opposite partner; close-ups of Hilda highlight the animation of Jean Alexander’s facial movements, while those of Stan underline an impassive stillness (except when he rubs his face).[5] Mid-shots of Stan in his chair expose a clutter on the table in front of him of a full ashtray, five miniature bottles and two glasses, as well as his jacket hanging on a corner of the back of the armchair (and possibly about to fall off). When Hilda is seen behind the table, the chief property visible is a vase of yellow, white and pink chrysanthemums, the two shots presenting two different interpretations of the room, as site of either informal practicality or harmonious decoration.

 Hilda’s awareness of the elegant space and frustration at Stan’s imperceptions provokes a speech that articulates the significance that the character attaches to the room, reflecting back from the idealised space to the flawed, quotidian, world of the domestic home:

 I just wish you was a bit more sensitised. To this place, for instance. Can’t you see the difference, Stan, between here and Number 13? It’s nicer, brighter, you know? There’s nothing tatty about it. No paint peeling or carpets fraying. And everything works. The doors close proper and the cupboards and all that. Ooh, just look at them beautiful curtains! No, it’s that better life what we’ve never had, chuck.

 On “brighter” in this speech, Hilda herself brightens up and rises from the chair, to walk around the room, noticing details of the décor, stopping to stroke the curtain with great delicacy. This movement is shown in a wide shot that lasts for 80 seconds, the camera slowly following Hilda around the room, the stately motion and full-body reactions allowing her a minute of grace and sensuality, distinct from the back-and-forth rhythm of dialogue with Stan.

 The design of this one-off set is distinct from any of the regular sets of 1977 Coronation Street. Lighting is warm rather than bright, with subtle shading. The colour scheme is of dark pink and pale yellow, picking out the warm, bright, details of the flowers. The décor has many pleasing details (lamps, ferns, small pictures of flowers and animals) but evenly arranged, rather than cramped. Hilda’s appreciation of this room is aesthetic, seen in her sensual pleasure in the bathroom suite and the curtains, but Stan only sees the room in practical terms. Being in each other’s company in this neutral, tidy, space away from home encourages wider reflection on the part of the Ogdens of the state of their marriage and understanding of each other, a discussion that they would be much less likely to have in the everyday Coronation Street sets of home or the Rovers Return.

Coronation Street Episode 2469 (28 November 1984, w. H.V. Kershaw, d. Brian Mills). (“Residents turn out to say a last farewell to a much-loved neighbour.” TV Times, 24 November 1984)

 Bernard Youens’ death in 1984 meant that the character of Hilda, and her function in the programme, had to change. Because the familiar plots used for the married Ogdens that I have outlined could no longer continue, the ways in which the widowed Hilda was shown to understand her life and herself changed. These changes were still dramatized through the use of space and the room, using variations of the three tropes.

 Stan Ogden’s death was commemorated in one of the most celebrated and well-remembered moments in British television drama of the 1980s. The episode of Stan’s funeral includes three sequences set in Number 13 Coronation Street; Hilda being greeted by two neighbours in the morning, Hilda in a crowded room full of mourners as the hearse arrives, and Hilda with her son Trevor (Don Hawkins) after the reception, then alone as Trevor (rather unsympathetically) leaves her. The third sequence ends the episode and is formed of two parts, of 110 and 95 seconds. These two parts are separated by a swift 40 second Rovers Return sequence that concludes the episode’s B plot: another heartbreak for Bet Lynch, seen disconsolate and drinking silently behind the bar, while Vera Duckworth (Liz Dawn) callously gossips about Hilda’s conduct at the funeral, “She’s not all there. You know what they say, where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling”.

 The first section is shown in a single, mobile, shot that zooms in on details and then rolls back from them. The scene starts with an extreme close up of a telegram, gradually rolling back to a conventional mid shot of Hilda and Trevor behind the back room table, as the dialogue explains that the telegram is sent from daughter Irma, far away from the funeral in Canada. When Hilda encourages Trevor to leave (“Oh now, look, you must get off. Its half past eight and you’ve a long way to go yet. You go on”) and he rises up, the effect of the camera’s quick upward movement to take in the standing figure is abrupt. Passing the mantelpiece in front of the ‘muriel’, Hilda notices a brown paper parcel, which Trevor explains contains Stan’s personal effects from the hospital, given to him when he collected the death certificate. While Hilda sees Trevor out, the camera takes twenty seconds to close in on the parcel. Hilda’s back enters the shot, as she picks up the parcel and turns towards the table. The camera then moves upwards from the close up of the parcel to a close up of Hilda’s face, deciding whether to open it.

 The unconventional single camera rhythm of this sequence concentrates on two properties, directing the viewer’s attention towards a different, stark, perception of Hilda’s situation than that of the story told through the prosaic dialogue in which Hilda copes and mediates. The (impersonal, uniform) telegram emphasises the familial absence and lack of support that Hilda faces (although the excuses that she gives on Irma’s behalf to Trevor are warm and reasonable), while the parcel (a property that Hilda only registers as her son departs) forms a literal representation of the baggage of grief, as a property that must be acknowledged and dealt with. The sequence ends with the moment when Hilda realises the full implications of her widowhood, at the first instance when she is alone. The full significance of this moment and its dramatic importance is designated for the viewer by the close-up, the first afforded to a face (rather than prop) in the scene. Jean Alexander’s performance in this scene features two brief, almost imperceptible, eye movements that prime the viewer towards the point when she will be left on her own: noticing an offstage clock on the forth wall prompts her to ask Trevor to leave, and registering the parcel on the mantelpiece before asking Trevor about it. Both moments show Hilda’s responses to the room, rather than the other person in it. Similarly, Trevor’s action of drumming his fingers on the table before swiftly rising to leave acts as a non-verbal insight into the character’s true feelings for the viewer, as well as a cue for the abrupt upwards movement of the camera.

 The second part of the sequence is composed of three shots, recorded by two cameras; a frontal shot of Hilda seated and toying with the string of the parcel; a close-up of the parcel from Hilda’s point of view as she unwraps it, removes a pair of pyjamas, lifts up and opens a glasses case; and a return to a closer frontal shot of Hilda with the glasses case, crying (Figure 10) and resting her head on the case, while the camera again focuses in, first on the case and then on Hilda’s wedding ring.

 Although the sequence is small-scale and intimate, the patterned combination of recurrent camera movements, concentration on specific properties, use of sound and nuances of Jean Alexander’s performance has a symphonic effect. Offstage sound of the closing door and the car leaving plays during the close-up of the parcel, a concentration on sound rather than dialogue continued in the scene’s silent conclusion, when the only sounds heard are crackling paper, the snap of the glasses case and Hilda’s sobs. Use of vision and sound compliment each other where, as the camera necessarily intrudes upon Hilda’s grief, the soundtrack holds back, withholding use of the Coronation Street theme over the end credits until thirty seconds later than usual, leaving the audience with a minute’s silence to mark the departure of a character that they have enjoyed watching for the last twenty years.

 The use of slow zoom onto objects in the first section is an unconventional device for Coronation Street, allowing the viewer to register its use, and notice when it returns at the end of the scene. The final zoom shot magnifies the effect of previous close-ups, concentrating on a smaller detail (the wedding ring), an effect supported by Hilda’s movement. When Hilda turns inwards to rest her head on Stan’s glasses case, it allows the viewer and camera to scrutinise first her agonised face, then the case and then the ring in the same movement: the present widow, the absent husband and the symbol of their union.

 Although the subject matter of the scene makes it affecting to watch even when seen out of context, for the long-term viewer it functions through the simultaneous layering of two of the visual tropes of the room in Coronation Street; the room as a private space of retreat for Hilda to grieve in on her own (the episode withholds leaving her alone until the final minute), and as a space of memory, for viewer as much as character. Stan is omnipresent in this scene. This is most obviously apparent in the property of the parcel, with the action of unwrapping unlocking greater awareness of Stan’s absence through each object handled, but is also encoded in the space of the room itself. The ‘muriel’, source of many amusing plots featuring Stan over the years, backs Hilda throughout the scene. As the camera advances upon the parcel three framed photographs of Stan, dating back to the 1960s, can be seen on the mantelpiece. Most significantly, the only words in the silent last sequence are those that can be clearly read on the label of the parcel (“Mr Stanley Ogden, 13 Coronation Street, Weatherfield”), linking the character of Stan to the home and the room.

 Hilda Ogden left Coronation Street in 1987, and the circumstances that led the character to take this decision were again presented in terms of space and the room. Hilda was employed as housekeeper to Doctor Lowther and his wife, a well-to-do couple outside Weatherfield, a job in which she was shown to be well suited and highly valued.

 The visual terms in which the Lowthers’ house (‘Goldenhurst, Oakfield Drive’), a spacious and gracefully furnished place, is presented to the viewer are unlike those of Coronation Street’s familiar locations (episode 2505, 3 April 1985). The home was shot on 16mm film on location and is therefore a real-life house, accentuating its sense of difference to the Street. Filming the home on location, rather than building a standing set in the studio, had the practical advantage that four rooms could be used in the one episode, the Lowthers’ kitchen, hallway, panelled dining room and living room, presenting Hilda with a range of different rooms to react to. Use of a real-life home also gave the programme the opportunity to show attractive conditions impossible to achieve in studio sets, such as natural light, or a view of an expansive leafy garden through a window. Visually, the Lowther’s home looks more like the spaces that viewers could expect to see in the commercials transmitted in the middle of Coronation Street than in the programme itself.

 Recording on film, with its greater opportunities to set up individual shots, as well as postproduction editing, means that Hilda’s resposes to the attractive space are clearly choreographed and shown to the viewer; the pleasure that she takes in arranging a tray, or handling a napkin. The most significant moment for Hilda of the sequences in the home, is captured in a short medium close-up to camera. Eating breakfast alone in the Lowther’s dining room, Hilda says to herself, “Ay chuck. This is what we should ‘ave had.” In Hilda’s epiphany, brought on by the gracious experience of “that better life” in an elegant home, her thoughts, and the viewers’ are brought back to Stan.

 In the scene immediately following from the idealized space of the Lowthers’ home, Hilda returns to number 13, and discovers that she has had a break-in, ironically while housesitting for the Lowthers. Hilda’s own room (shown in a wider shot than usual) has been turned over, with chairs overturned, ornaments knocked over and armchairs taken apart. The contrast between the two homes (film/videotape, unfamiliar/familiar, elegant/shabby), already stark and inescapable, is accentuated by the trope of the violated space. Worst of all for Hilda, Stan’s photo, the most important locus of the room as a space of memory for her (as seen in the funeral episode), has been smashed. Much of the scene’s emotive power for the regular viewer lies in this combination of tropes, where the familiar room functions as site of simultaneous violation and memory.

 When Hilda eventually leaves Coronation Street (episode 2790, 25 December 1987), her sense of the value of her surroundings to herself had become restored. Hilda’s final scene in number 13 connects the character to the room almost symbiotically, as she explains "I've come in here more times than I care to remember. Cold. Wet. Tired out. Not a penny in me purse. And seeing them ducks and that muriel... well they've kept me hand away from the gas tap. And that's a fact”. This speech reiterates the role of the room in Coronation Street as both intimate and private space and as a space of memory for both viewer and character.

 This demonstrates how the Coronation Street audiences’ empathy with, and perception of, Hilda Ogden was achieved through the character’s understanding of the rooms that she inhabited. This particular, spatial, understanding of character was unique to the studio form and regular domestic reception of the television soap opera.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berger, Thomas, ‘Review: Shakespeare on Television’, Shakespeare Quarterly 40, 1989, pp.237-9.

Dent, Grace, ‘Crowned with glory’, Guardian, Saturday 30 June 2005.

Hobson, Dorothy, Crossroads: The Drama of a Soap Opera, London: Methuen, 1982.

Hobson, Dorothy, Soap Opera, Bodmin, Polity, 2003.

Podmore, Bill, with Reece, Peter, Coronation Street: The Inside Story, London: MacDonald, 1990.

Wheatley, Helen, ‘Rooms within Rooms: Upstairs Downstairs & the Studio Costume Drama of the 1970s’, in Johnson, Catherine, and Turnock, Rob (eds.) ITV Cultures, Maidenhead: Open University, 2005, pp.143-158.

Williams, Raymond, Raymond Williams on Television, London, Routledge, 1989.

 

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[1] ‘The Great Soap Survey’, Radio Times, July 17 2004, pp. 18-21.

[2] In addition to Irma and Trevor, two further children (Tony and Sylvia) were mentioned in the Ogdens’ earliest Coronation Street appearances, but these characters never appeared nor were they referred to subsequently.

[3] Literally, an iconic image, as the Liverpool artist David Knopov has created a series of Andy Warhol-style silkscreen prints of Hilda.

[4] A variation of this visual gag is most famously seen in the Only Fools and Horses episode ‘A Touch of Glass’ (BBC, 8 December 1982).

[5] Bernard Youens had suffered a stroke in 1975.

Plot inflation in Greater Weatherfield: Coronation Street in the 1990s

Coronation Street #3109 (17 August 1990) Class war reaches Weatherfield as Des and Steph Barnes move into the new home at Number 6.

 This article was first published on the (now defunct) University of Reading 'Spaces of Television' blog on April 17 2013:

Snooping on Don Brennan from the Back Garden: Watching Coronation Street in the 1990s.

 For much of my twenties in the 1990s and early 2000s, before my eventual career as a Television Studies academic, I worked as a library assistant. Over years of tea breaks in library staff rooms I overheard (and occasionally contributed to) many conversations about soap operas, always Coronation Street (ITV, Granada, 1960-) and EastEnders (BBC1, 1985-). The content of these conversations generally took two forms: judgment over the rightness or wrongness of characters and their actions (“I was really sorry for Gail when Martin had a one night stand with that nurse“), and speculation as to how events would progress (“Who do you think shot Grant Mitchell?”). More general consideration of these soaps as programmes in themselves was infrequent and generally took the form of complaints about how they weren’t what they used to be (“It’s too depressing these days/ there are too many young people/ gangsters in it now”)

 Because of this, one very atypical tea break discussion has always stayed in my mind. Decades later, thanks to the invaluable and exhaustive resource of Corriepedia I can trace the precise episode that we were talking about – #3395, 10 June 1992. The reason why this conversation was so unusual is because we weren’t talking about Rita‘s marriage to Ted Sullivan, or Emily Bishop‘s protracted nervous breakdown, but how the programme was shot and the means by which the director (Julian Farino) had conveyed plot information to the audience. A routine scene –  “Don Brennan takes time out to track Julie Dewhurst down and give her lifts in the cab. She cooks him a meal when he persists being with her.” – had not been shown from inside the living room where it was taking place, but partially observed though a window from Julie’s back garden. What was all that about? We couldn’t understand what it was supposed to signify. Did this mean that somebody else was aware of Don’s actions and was spying on him? Surely not Ivy? If so, then why weren’t we subsequently shown who the watcher in the garden was?

 What none of us understood at the time was that the odd way that this scene had been realised was not because of anything to do with the story of Don Brennan’s hoped-for infidelity, but because the visual grammar of how Coronation Street was made was changing before our eyes. Although much of the appeal of, and emotional investment that the dedicated viewer places in, Coronation Street derives from a sense of familiarity and continuity, throughout the 1990s the form, structure and feel of the programme was actually radically, but largely invisibly, changing. What was most significant about the audience being placed in Julie Dewhurst’s garden was that momentarily – through an incidence of badly misjudged direction – the curtain was lifted and viewers such as my colleagues and myself were made aware of the changing ontology of Coronation Street as it occurred.

Changing production and broadcast of Coronation Street in the 1990s.

 Coronation Street underwent two near-concurrent major changes to its production practice towards the end of the 1980s, changes that inexorably altered both the form and dramatic function of the programme. The first change, in 1988, was switching the recording of location sequences from 16mm film to videotaped Outside Broadcast (OB) (Little, 2000: 188). Using more transportable and flexible OB recording technology enabled the programme to use many more exterior scenes than previously, creating a more mobile mise-en-scene more in line with the contemporary continuing series Brookside (Channel 4, Mersey TV, 1982-2003) and The Bill (ITV, Thames, 1984-2010). This increase in location sequences meant that for the first time the world of Coronation Street could regularly, rather than infrequently, go beyond the familiar cobbled street and onto the streets, houses and institutions of the wider world (from hereon referred to as ‘Greater Weatherfield’), with the programme featuring three or four outside locations each week by the 1990s (Hanson & Kingston, 1999: 58).

 The second major change to the programme was a move to production and broadcast of three episodes per week in October 1989, Coronation Street having previously run twice weekly since its launch in 1960. Transmitting an extra edition of its highest-rated programme was a highly popular move within the ITV network, which had long suffered a problem with attracting substantial audiences on Friday nights (Kay, 1991: 24-5). The Street‘s executive producer David Liddiment (1988-92), explained the move to a third episode:

“We had already made the decision to increase the volume of location material and we were looking at a schedule to give us more time on location and the same time in the studio. I didn’t want the process we’d started, of increasing the production values of an episode, to be neutralised by the need to make a third episode. I wanted to make sure we could continue to enhance the production values of the programme and do a third episode. But there was a kind of rhythm about Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the fact that Neighbours and Home and Away were being shown five days a week with healthy audiences was. I felt, indicative of our ability to hold an audience for an extra episode.” (1991: 24)

 What is interesting about Liddiment’s justification is that it links both changes (mode of recording and amount of episodes) together, with increased location scenes constituting an increase in “production values”, an artistic advance that must be safeguarded.

 Preparations for the introduction of a third episode were carefully considered, resulting in extensive changes to several essential aspects of the programme. The composition of the street itself was altered, with the demolition of the Baldwin’s Casuals clothing factory and Community Centre creating space for three new homes (numbers 4, 6 and 8). New houses required new residents, broadening the social mix of the series’ characters, a change that returning producer Mervyn Watson (1982-85, 1989-92) saw as creating fresh dramatic possibilities for the series:

 “The reconstruction of the even-numbers side of the street has opened up a new swathe of stories and characters. It was appropriate that the first occupants of No 6 Coronation Street should be newcomers, the hot-tempered newlyweds Des and Steph Barnes. By mixing old and new, our well established characters have been given new possibilities and a new lease of life.” (in Kay, 1991: 31)

 In order to fill 52 extra episodes per year without increasing the workload of the show’s actors, the number of regular and semi-regular characters increased from around 30 to around 40. In order to incorporate the greater number of characters and locations, the show also became faster-paced, incorporating more (and therefore shorter) scenes per episode.

 At the same time that new outside broadcast technology was introduced, radical alterations were also being made to Granada’s facilities for the interior studio scenes that formed the bulk of Coronation Street‘s settings, with the opening of Stage One, an enormous new studio exclusively for the production of the programme, in 1990 (Hanson & Kingston, 1999: 51). The size of Stage One meant that permanent standing sets could be kept for interiors of all the Street’s houses and businesses for the first time, previously only kept for the main Rovers Return interior in the old studios (Podmore & Reece, 1990: 171). A further change to the making of studio scenes in the 1990s came with the introduction of Avid digital editing technology, greatly increasing opportunities for postproduction (Hanson & Kingston, 1999: 98).

 Like Watson, Liddiment described the combined effect of these changes as creating opportunities to offer viewers a broader, more diverse and exciting dramatic experience than before:

“In the last few years, we’ve transformed the way we make programmes. Until a couple of years ago, each episode would probably have more than four or five different settings – either the shop or café and two or three interiors of houses, plus, at the most, two scenes shot outside on the street set or at a separate location. And each episode would have no more than 14 scenes. A typical episode now has eight or nine different interiors and four outside locations, and anything up to 22 or 23 scenes. We go more on location. We see more of Weatherfield than we used to. We see more of the street. At one time, that wouldn’t have happened because it was a luxury the schedule didn’t allow, but we make TV now with lighter equipment that requires less lighting, so you’ve got more time.” (in Kay, 1991: 26-8)

 A more sceptical reaction to the changed production conditions of the late eighties was revealed in the memoirs of Watson’s predecessor, Bill Podmore (producer 1976-7, 1977-82, 1987-8, executive producer 1982-7). As well as expressing general concern about overkill dissipating viewers’ attachment to the series, Podmore had specific qualms about the increased volume of characters and storylines:

“New houses are to be built along the street and inevitably the cast must grow. It worries me just how many characters the viewers can absorb and care about. The more characters you have, the more each individual is diluted; you can’t feature them all at any one time. I thought we had already achieved the optimum balance, and perhaps even tipped the scales slightly on the down side. When I retired the cast numbered almost thirty and was the largest in the programme’s history. We would be constantly reminded of the dangers of an expanding cast at the writers’ conferences; we had trouble enough creating good story-lines for the characters we had, let alone others we might have like to introduce. The writers often complained we had too many as it was. To add perhaps another ten will mean that some characters – and possibly firm favourites with the viewers – may not be seen for quite long periods while storylines float around the others, Transmitting three days a week doesn’t mean that more story-lines can be crammed into any one episode. They will simply pass through the programme, and be used up, more speedily.” (Podmore & Reece, 1990: 178)

 Although extra characters and storylines were added to fill the 25 minutes additional airtime (and make full use of the dramatic opportunities created by increased availability of location recording) without increasing the workload of performers, there still remained only seven days a week to produce three episodes of Coronation Street in and recording schedules changed accordingly.

 A typical 1980s production week allocated all location filming (mostly of Street exteriors) to Monday mornings, followed by rehearsals for blocking in the afternoon. Tuesday rehearsals concentrated on performance and interpretation, with actors expected to be off script by final rehearsals on Wednesday morning. The full cast attended the Wednesday afternoon technical run, performed in front of the full crew (formed of technical supervisors, camera and sound operators, production assistants, ASMs, wardrobe, make-up and others). Any extra outdoor filming required was completed on Thursday morning, with studio recording starting at 2.30 p.m. and continuing over Friday when it had to be completed by 6.30 p.m. in order to be edited and dubbed over the weekend (Podmore & Reece 1990: 169-73)

 In order to incorporate the extra episode, the 1990 working week was extended by a day, with outside location recording on Sunday, Street exteriors on Monday, rehearsals on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, technical run on Wednesday afternoon, with studio lighting set up overnight on Wednesday in preparation for two full days of studio recording between 9.00 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. on Thursday and Friday (Kay 1991: 62-3). Although (less) time for rehearsals was still kept, by the end of the decade (after the addition of a fourth Sunday episode in 1996) formal rehearsals had been abandoned, with location recording from Sunday to Monday or Tuesday followed by three days in the studio from Wednesday to Friday, with pre-shooting of complex sequences weeks in advance of their place in the recording rota becoming common practice (Hanson & Kingston 1999: 76-7).

 This article considers the implications of these changes through textual analysis. How was the tenor and tone of the series affected by the new modes and forms of production? And how was the way that Coronation Street functioned (and was understood by viewers) as a drama altered by greater scope of location, more characters, new houses and twice as much airtime?

Comparative analysis of the topography of Coronation Street in January 1979 and January 1991

 The ten episodes of Coronation Street broadcast in January 1979 operate around a limited number of interior studio locations, all permanent standing sets at Granada Studios. Events are shown in five houses (numbers 1,5, 9, 11 and 13) and four businesses (The Rovers Return, Dawson’s Café, Corner Shop and Kabin newsagent) located either on or adjacent to Coronation Street. Only one other interior studio location is shown, Baldwin’s Casuals, a clothing factory run by and employing many of the programme’s regular characters, formed onscreen of two rooms, a sewing room and adjoining Manager’s Office. Across these nine buildings, events are shown in 14 rooms.

 Apart from Coronation Street itself, exterior filming is highly limited, with ‘Greater Weatherfield’ confined to a nightclub doorway on New Year’s Day and the exterior of a block of Council flats Deirdre Langton plans to move into. One episode (#1878) features no filmed inserts whatsoever.

 Only one other interior location is used in that month’s run, an unnamed supermarket in Victoria Street featuring as site for a comic storyline in which Suzie Birchall falsely claims to have won an upmarket job as a perfume demonstrator while actually working as a sausage chef. With this plot only running for two episodes (#1879 and #1880) it could only have been practicable and affordable to film these scenes on location, rather than to construct a supermarket set in Granada’s studios. As realised on screen, the effect of recording these sequences on film serves to separate them from the rest of the programme, giving them a different feel and effect. While the convention of 16mm filmed inserts is easy to adjust to when watching exterior scenes (our perception of lighting and acoustics is very different when we step outdoors in real life), the effect is different for the viewer when filmed footage is used for interior scenes, turning the supermarket into a location, visually comprehended as being an other place, as opposed to another place, with different conditions and expectations to studio interiors.

#1879 (22 January 1979) Suzie Birchall looks for work in a Weatherfield supermarket.

 This sense of apartness work in favour of the supermarket plot within the wider dramatic narrative of that month’s Coronation Street. The viewer’s emotional interest in Suzie Birchall’s downfall is reliant upon the possibility of the character being found out and humiliatingly exposed (as inevitably happens when Suzie is seen by gossip Hilda Ogden). When Suzie Birchall’s job is presented in a different, filmic, visual register to the rest of Coronation Street then the prospect of the familiar Coronation Street world encroaching upon her new existence carries a particular disruptive force for the viewer. The sense of mild disjuncture picked up by the viewer in rare sequences like this supermarket storyline worked largely because of the exceptionalism of such locations in the programme at the time, when the wider world of  ‘Greater Weatherfield’ was rarely visited.

 By the 13 episodes of January 1991 the terrain covered by Coronation Street has greatly expanded, with scenes in eight houses (1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10a, 13 and 15a) and five businesses (The Rovers Return, corner shop, Kabin, Casey’s Garage and Dawson’s – now renamed Jim’s – Cafe) on or adjacent to the Street. Across these 12 buildings, events are shown in 20 rooms.

 The most striking difference between 1979 and 1991 is that flexible location recording now means that much more of the drama occurs away from the street. In addition to many unidentified road and street exteriors, scenes routinely occur in ‘other’ pubs or homes of characters’ girlfriends away from the Street. The relative speed with which location recording could be set up meant that relatively brief scenes requiring outside locations could be shown from multiple perspectives; for example, an argument in a branch of the ‘Wetherfield & General Building Society’ (Episode 3181, 30 January) happening in two rooms of the building. Scenes even happen in Lancashire places identified as beyond Weatherfield (a pub on the A69, a Manchester department store) without being presented as exceptional occurrences.

 A major change in the topography of the series is found in the types of workplaces regularly featured. Much of the action is now located in Bettabuys Supermarket, a business which employs (at both junior managerial and more menial levels) several of the Street’s residents, as well as introducing a raft of new semi-regular characters, most notoriously manager Reg Holdsworth, who tends to dominate many viewers’ early ‘90s memories of Coronation Street. Unlike the studio-based Baldwin’s Casuals, Bettabuys was shot on location in a real supermarket, creating a very different sense of workplace to those previously shown in Coronation Street. Where events in Baldwin’s Casuals were confined to the factory floor and manager’s office, action in Bettabuys over the month extends over seven locations; shop floor, manager’s office, canteen, corridors, loading bay, storeroom and ladies’ lavatories.

 This range of spaces increases dramatic possibilities for workplace scenes, creating many more opportunities for characters to be seen by, react to, and gossip about, each other. Every room carries different specific social rituals and expectations, that can be observed or disrupted by the people in it; it is taboo for workers to make scenes in front of customers on the shop floor, the canteen between shifts is a better place and time to discuss personal matters, the lavatory is the safest place to retreat to when upset but is also a location where an enemy or boss may overhear you, and so forth. New opportunities created by OB recording for regular settings like Bettabuys maintained the sense of familiarity that viewers had previously found in locations such as Baldwin’s Casuals, but now placed them in the type of verisimiliar ‘outside world’ location previously only seen infrequently and fleetingly in the Street, as in the Suzie Birchall supermarket story of 1979.

Episode 2956 (27 July 1989)

 An early example of the opportunities that OB location recording created for Coronation Street to tell familiar stories in unfamiliar ways can be found in this episode, written by Paul Abbott. The philandering Mike Baldwin plot is a very typical one (“Mike admits to Alma that he took Dawn out. Alma tells him she loves him but he tells her he’s not after love”), but the scene is located in a beer garden (The Crooked Billet) in a previously-unseen canal-side district of ‘Greater Weatherfield’. The scene is shown through a simple camera set up, with an establishing shot of the leafy sunny pub followed by alternating close-ups of Mike and Alma.

 The unfamiliarity and attractiveness of the location raises the dramatic stakes of the scene. Because Mike has taken Alma to a higher class of venue the insensitivity of his actions are made to seem more jarring, and accentuate Alma’s display of disappointment and hurt. What is striking about how this section functions within the dramatic context of the episode’s narrative is that it is an unexceptional, rather brief, dialogue scene of only 80 seconds. Such a scene could not have been attempted under the recording conditions of 1979, where the difficulty and expense of recording in outside locations meant that those few settings that were used had to be dramatically imperative to the story told, as in the supermarket plot. In preceding years, such a scene would of necessity have to be set in a permanent location such as the Rovers or the cafe.

 The quick and economic nature of OB recording can also be seen in this episode in a short 40-second sequence in which Alma’s friend Audrey consoles her on a walk in an unnamed park.

 The open location, away from home and workplace interiors, allows characters to be reflective about their situation, while also creating a specific sensation of summertime for the viewer, the means to evoke a sense of the passing seasons being something largely missing previously in Coronation Street.

Multi-camera, single camera and editing.

 Although there was no one identifiable moment of change in studio recording practice equivalent to the switch to OB exteriors in 1988, incremental changes in the style and form of studio interiors created by changes to camera and editing technology continually occurred during the 1990s. Although studio interiors were recorded on three cameras throughout the 1990s, the introduction of Avid editing technology enabled much easier, and more frequent, post-production of these scenes (Hanson and Kingston, 1999: 100-1). At the same time, changes in camera technology allowed for more sophisticated focusing and higher definition images to be used than before. Here I compare an instance when the tried-and-trusted multi-camera technique inhibited a scene from being fully dramatically realized, with an early use of higher-definition single camera recording in Coronation Street.

Episode 3920 (11 October 1995)

 During the three-episode period of the 1990s, the pattern of shooting Coronation Street’s studio interiors required recording up to thirty scenes with three cameras in a day and a half, the director having marked around 400 separate shots on the camera script to be followed during recording, with familiar recognized patterns of camera movement and mixing often regularly used (Kay, 1991: 63). Ostensibly, this episode’s final section should have been ideally suited for recording under such well-established conditions. The scene, an important part of the plot that leads to the exit of one of the programme’s longest running and best-loved figures, Bet Gilroy (nee Lynch) shows a climatic argument and irrevocable falling-out between old friends, material seemingly meat and drink to Coronation Street. Bet has been presented with the opportunity to buy the property and licence of the Rovers Return, which she has previously managed as landlady. Lacking sufficient solo funds for the venture, she believes that her old friend Rita Sullivan will offer finance for the pair to go into managerial partnership together.

 The confrontation, shot on two cameras, in the Kabin newsagent revolves around a very simple rise-and-fall reversal of Bet’s expectations. Rita and Mavis Wilton are working behind the counter when Bet arrives brandishing a bottle of champagne, having secured a reduced price for the pub from the brewery. When Rita tells Bet that she won’t go through with the venture a furious row ensues, with Bet leaving the shop.

 This story is presented in very simple visual terms with, once their conversation has started, action confined to a sequence of alternating close-ups of Bet and Rita, book-ended by before-and-after mid-shots of Bet entering the Kabin doorway in triumph and departing in high dudgeon. This clarity of presentation accentuates the combative rhythms of the argument, allowing the viewer to observe the ‘hit’ of reaction to every truth-telling insult (“It was Len’s cash what got you started! But for him, you’d be a clapped-out chorus girl!” “Better than a clapped out barmaid!”) and experience the considerable pleasure of watching the teeth-bearing, gimlet-eyed, fury of two elaborately-coiffured and made-up women in their fifties and sixties in close-up detail.

  

 

Unfortunately, this two camera switching also serves to limit the scene from achieving its full dramatic potential. The third woman present during the confrontation, Mavis, ends up being neglected by the camera, leaving her contributions to the scene marginal and incoherent, a blurry and muffled presence in the corner of the frame, briefly hinted at in a momentary sideways glance from Julie Goodyear. Mavis’ contribution to the scene is hard to discern when first watched, and it is only once seen several times (a luxury unavailable to the original viewer) that one can establish precisely what happens to her: she becomes discomfited by the scene, mumbles a suggestion that Bet and Rita might have their discussion somewhere else and, despite being on duty in the shop, walks out in embarrassment. This strand of the story is overlooked in the presentation of the scene, with Mavis seen only as a fluttering hand behind Rita and as the back of a head that momentarily passes in front of Bet.

 It is instructive to imagine how this scene might be viewed if performed on a theatrical stage, where an audience would be just as aware of the presence of Mavis as of Bet and Rita, and potentially in sympathy with her: not knowing how to respond when other people are arguing can be as dramatically interesting a situation as an argument itself. Although the possibilities offered by greater use of single-camera technology and the ability to edit in separately-recorded shots would not necessarily alleviate the dramatic faults of this scene (and editing-in separately recorded shots might run the risk of diluting the rhythm of the argument), it would mean that the problem of Mavis’ invisibility during the scene might at least have been more systematically considered before transmission.

Episode 3417 (29 July 1992)

 In contrast, this episode (directed by Brian Mills) provides an extremely early example of single camera recording and extensive postproduction for studio scenes in Coronation Street. This stylistic experimentation appears to have been born of necessity, with one comic storyline (Rovers landlord Alec Gilroy’s purchase of a rare Mexican mouse-eating spider, which then escapes during a kitchen inspection from an environmental health officer) impossible to record under conventional conditions, with the spider’s performance having to be shot in separate cutaways.

 The directorial style necessitated by the nature of the kitchen scenes, which present details and features of the room in close up detail and precise definition, carries over onto other interiors throughout the episode, in which the misfortunes of Ivy Brennan form a tragic counterbalance to the comic story of the spider. Having had his foot amputated after crashing his taxi (in a suicide attempt after Julie broke off their affair), Don is discharged from hospital, but refuses to return to Ivy. Ivy’s vigil of waiting is presented through concentration upon objects in the foreground (a vase of fresh flowers, a silent telephone and a bottle of sherry) while Ivy’s own movements and conversations with her daughter-in-law, Gail, occur in blurred focus in the background of the frame. The striking effect of this unconventional filming demands the viewer’s full attention and, unlike the misdirected “snooping on Don Brennan from the back garden” instance, serves an intentional storytelling purpose. Concentrating upon the objects handled, rather than the woman handling them, encourages empathy with Ivy’s agitation and disconnected state of mind, and is the closest that Coronation Street comes to a point of view shot in this period.

 Where this new technique perhaps proves counterproductive is in its jarring ontological unfamiliarity. Were such visual devices used in a one-off ITV drama in 1992 their principle effect upon the viewer would be to offer narrative clarity, but, because they were used in Coronation Street in 1992, a programme that had accrued a familiar visual style through 32 years of studio practice, the direction draws attention to itself as much as to the story, the unfamiliar style distracting the viewer’s attention away from Ivy’s plight as much as it does to illuminate it. 

  The scene’s style can be described as directorially prescriptive, putting little trust in viewers’ imaginative ability to appreciate nuances of character revealed through the detail of actors’ performances, a traditional Coronation Street strength. When seen from a present-day perspective, the episode (which experiments with sound as well as vision, continuing the soundtrack of one scene over the visuals of the next) appears out-of-time, placing the world of 1992 into the television style of about ten years later.

Plot inflation.

 The 1990s broadcasting environment in which Coronation Street operated was a more crowded and competitive field than that of previous decades. As well as the efforts of rival serials Eastenders, Brookside and Emmerdale (Emmerdale Farm until 1989, ITV, Yorkshire Television 1972-, since 1988 broadcast nationwide in an evening slot and continuously throughout the year), television ratings had been falling since the mass availability of the video recorder in the 1980s, and were further challenged by the introduction of U.K. satellite and cable broadcasting in 1989. With soap operas attracting a regular audience to their host channels, all four serials increased output in the 1980s and 1990s, Emmerdale being the last to introduce a third episode in 1997. The increased amount of airtime needing to be filled, combined with the pressure to keep series discussed in the press, has lead to the growth period of soap operas during the 1990s being characterized as a time of greatly increased sensationalism in storylines. Jimmy McGovern (who had written one episode of Coronation Street in 1990), identified and mistrusted this trend:

Inflation has set in. The Street used to be immune to it but even there writers are losing faith in actors, and the actors are losing faith in the characters. So people have to place great faith in the stories. But that’s when inflation sets in because one story has to top another. (In Jeffries: 2000, 170-1)

 To suggest that Coronation Street had somehow avoided sensational storylines before the late 1980s would be a misrepresentation. The recurrent need, faced by all continuous series, to write actors out necessitates the regular recurrence of partners walking out of relationships and sudden deaths and, although the Street didn’t suffer its first murder until the shooting of Ernest Bishop in 1978, its unfortunate residents had already experienced many shocking demises; crushed by van, suicide, or electrocution by faulty hairdryer. Nor had it avoided spectacular disasters, enduring a train crash in 1967 and a lorry crash in 1979. The particular change to Coronation Street in the 1990s lay in the form that such occurrences took, as well as the frequency with which they happened. Previous shocking events, such as Minnie Caldwell being held at gunpoint (1970), or Deidre Langton being sexually assaulted (1977), had always occurred in the familiar location of Coronation Street itself, with the sense of community that viewers derived from the setting helping to make such exceptional storylines disruptive and memorable, encouraging empathetic feeling for regular characters who had become victims.

 An early example of how the presentation of potentially sensational violent events in Coronation Street was changing is the end (a week after the wedding) of Mike Baldwin’s second marriage (#3251, 12 July 1991). When Jackie, a wealthy widow, discovers the full extent that Mike has attempted to defraud her through matrimony, she threatens him with a loaded shotgun when he arrives home. Although this violent scene would be always freighted with the problem of basic implausibility wherever it was set, the unfamiliar ‘Greater Weatherfield’ location of Elmsgate Gardens handicaps its ontological integration into the imaginative world of Coronation Street. The location (a real house, not a studio set) has only been previously seen in a handful of episodes and carries few emotional associations for the viewer, so such a violent event carries less in the way of disruptive force for the viewer than it otherwise could: people might do such things all the time in Elmsgate Gardens, for all that the regular viewer knows. When such sensational events happen away from the understood community of Coronation Street, audiences can view them as separate from other incidents in the programme, and they come to carry less of an emotive pull.

Episode 4179 (18 April 1997)

 By 1997, spectacular and shocking events had become almost commonplace in the now four-times weekly Coronation Street, realised on such a grand scale as to make makes the gun-toting Jackie Baldwin sequence of six years earlier appear brief and underplayed in comparison. Advances in PSC (Portable Single Camera) technology and a more flexible recording schedule allowing greater leeway for storylines to be shot out of sequence made it more possible to mount ambitious scenes on a scale rarely previously attempted.

 The events of this hour-long special (double-length editions were an innovation first introduced in 1995), present a good example of this in practice. The episode concentrates upon the actions of a crazed Don Brennan, who has contrived a vendetta against Mike Baldwin and recently set fire to his factory. He picks Alma (now Mike’s third wife) up in his (unlicensed) taxi one night, drives past her requested stop, locks her in, and refuses to let her leave. At a deserted quayside, Alma tries to call for help on the taxi radio, which Don then rips out and destroys. After Don hits her Alma breaks free, but Don chases her in the car and forces her back into the cab. He drives the taxi straight into the River Irwell at the Quays, with them both inside it.

 This lurid storyline comprised the most elaborate and technically demanding sequence yet attempted in Coronation Street, requiring five separate 12-hour night shoots involving trained stunt people and underwater filming, a process compared by Coronation Street’s producer to making a James Bond film (Hanson and Kingston, 1999: 94-5). The use of PSC editing does give the story a cinematic feel, facilitating extreme close-ups of Brennan’s eyes reflected in the rear-view mirror, quick editing of spectacular dangerous driving, shots rotating around the ragged couple on the deserted quayside, POV shots of the driver stalking his quarry, and so forth.

 The same token that makes this storyline spectacular also makes its integration into the world of Coronation Street problematic. The Don and Alma plot forms 15 separate sections within the episode, some of these very brief. Each time that the action returns from the frightening wastelands of Greater Weatherfield back to the Street, the viewer is forced to readjust to a different, ontologically familiar, world. Although this juxtaposition of Rovers Return and terrifying Quayside ordeal is freighted with dramatic ironies it tends to dominate the overall narrative of the episode and means that more subdued plots, such as the recently widowed Mavis’ grief, are given less room to establish themselves than might otherwise be the case. While it was impressive that Coronation Street was capable of achieving a convincing thriller kidnap plot in 1997, similar plots could be seen in other drama programmes at the time, and such stories prevented Coronation Street from creating distinctive drama unique to itself.

 The place of this story within the wider narrative of 1997 Coronation Street also demonstrates the questionable sustainability of a series in thrall to plot inflation. Kidnapping Alma (following on from setting fire to Baldwin’s factory) wasn’t the climax of Don’s irrational behaviour, which eventually arrived six months later when, having been interrupted while attempting to club Mike to death, Don died, while attempting to run Mike over, in an explosive car crash (#4278, 8 October 1997). Spectacularly violent events risk becoming less of a talking point once they become regular occurrences.

Conclusion

 This article has demonstrated that two concurrent changes that Coronation Street underwent at the end of the 1980s (greater and more extensive location recording and the introduction of a third episode) radically affected the form that the programme took, and how viewers understood it.

The greater amount of airtime to fill encouraged the creation of more sensational and protracted storylines. In the 1990s, the world of Coronation Street expanded beyond the immediate confines of the Street into ‘Greater Weatherfield’, a place that bore more visual similarities to the wider world, but which undermined the emotional and imaginative ties that viewers had formed with the familiar Street itself.

POSTSCRIPT (2 October 2013).

 Some enjoyably trenchant comments about plot inflation from Christine Geraghty are included in an article about the crisis in British soap operas by Stuart Jeffries in today’s Guardian:

Of course, soaps have hardly been popular because they have their finger on the pulse of the nation. In their heyday, they were immersive experiences that took their own sweet time developing stories and characters, and thereby made themselves convincing and seductive to mass audiences. “People witter on about The Wire and Mad Men,” says soap opera specialist Professor Christine Geraghty of the University of Glasgow. “It drives me mad. British soaps were doing those complicated multi-layered narratives long before HBO was invented. Soaps used to have the confidence to let very little happen sometimes.”

Soaps, then, were like Greek drama. What was important was not splashy plot twists – be it car crash, baby swap, lesbian snog or corpse under the patio – but how characters processed such incidents through the medium of gossip. “They don’t have the confidence to do that now,” says Geraghty. “There’s a relentless intensity of plotting that makes soaps often seem daft.” Why are they doing that? “Because the big stories capture the intermittent viewer, often at the expense of the regular viewer. The logic is that the more stories you have and the bigger they are, the better you compete with other formats. But that relentlessness eats up people and stories in an effort to counteract what’s going on elsewhere in TV. The risk is they look soulless and cynical. It’s also a vexed question as to whether those big stories help ratings in the long run.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hanson, David and Kingston, Jo. Coronation St.: Access All Areas. London: Andre Deutsch, 1999.

Jeffries, Stuart. Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy: Growing Up in Front of the Telly. London: Flamingo, 2000.

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