Stapes and Browns, where's all the fun

Mayhem

It's easy to forget, under this new insanovision Coronation Street, that Fiz's family used to be funny, and Chesney was very cute.
This was before that small mole started trying to get out of the end of his nose.
But gone are the knockabout larks of yore - even Chez's mate Kirk's been dragged into the abyss lately.
This is a family that, off the top of my head in the last two years or so, has seen Fiz convicted of murder - for which she's just been bailed pending appeal (!) - for a crime she didn't commit. Okay so she might have covered up the body - or was that the other one? But the actual killing was done by her (now late) husband John.
That's Stape, who has killed one person (Charlotte the Smash robot) by caving her in the head with a hammer - whose body, actually she was still alive at this point, he dumped in the rubble caused by a train wreck outside his gaff - and let another (Colin Fishwick) die in his house, before burying him under the knicker factory floor, so he could continue living under John's name, thus allowing him to teach.
The reason he couldn't teach - his old job - under his own identity is he had an affair with a schoolgirl (Rosie) and then kidnapped her - can anyone remember why? So he nicked Colin's identity.
While in prison for at least some of that, and diagnosed with acute mentalness of the cranium, he and Fiz get married. Outside of nick John gets a stalker, and L story S, it's Charlotte.
John and Fiz have a kid which develops a hole in the heart, John also kills Colin's mum to stop her shouting after he confesses to her what he's done (up to that point).
Then Fiz nicks the mum's legacy, meanwhile John is pretending to Charlotte's parents that he (as Colin) was going to marry Charlotte. Chesney susses it so John holds him and Charlotte's parents hostage in the basement for a bit until Fiz - who STILL won't turn John in - rescues them. At some point in all this John had stopped taking his mental pills.
But before that John gets a job digging holes for Chesney's girlfriend's dad Owen - he's only about to dig up Colin! Luckily he gets Fiz to help him sling the body in the canal.
After that she rescues Chesney and the parents before the police turn up and John then nicks his and Fiz's baby. Fiz then gets run over, John comes back the hozzy, gives her the kid, goes to the roof, falls off it and disappears.
Then he comes back a bit later and kidnaps Rosie again before crashing his car with her dad Kevin in hot pursuit. John then dies in hospital but not before he videoed a confession supposedly exonerating his wife of all crimes.
As of last night Fiz was still in nick, but about to be bailed. She's been found guilty of one murder and possibly she got done for nicking the old girl's money, although that bit seems to have been forgotten.
While in nick, Fiz has been accused of being a grass, had her baby threatened, grassed, and bashed the woman who threatened her baby.
And just to round things off about two weeks ago they (the government?) gave the dog Schmeichel (a great Dane - I only just got that) cancer. The dog. Got cancer. This is how you want to get people watching, ITV?
He died last night, but only after Chez had nicked the money his bird's dad had given her to pay the rent, which was late so a bailiff came round, on vets bills and medicinal bonio and the like. Was the rent really bailiff late though?
I think that's about it. Now, is it just me or does that all seem a little far fetched?

Last night's Corrie - tram-tacular

Trouble a'brew'n

What the bloody hell was all that? A double bill of massive weirdness, like Hunter S Thompson and William Burroughs had been drafted in to produce at the last second and done a mad cut and paste job on the script. Welcome to day one of Corrie's week of 'we're still going! celebrations.
Was the first one the live episode? Because it was especially odd viewing, as the John Stape and Molly, Kev and Tyrone stories trundled to their sort-of conclusions.
There seemed to be two main thrusts - Peter and Leanne's respective stag and hen dos, and Molly, Tyrone, Kev and the 'baybeh', with John Stape ably supporting by hammering that Tweeny in the back of the head.
And of course lurking in the background was the much trumpeted tram crash - I knew that tram would be trouble. As soon as they added it to the new CGI credits I said to Mrs Biff: 'That tram'll be trouble.'
As usual with Corrie's Monday efforts the first episode was mainly the set up to the second's punchlines and there was clearly a real effort to keep up the who'llgetit? angle. Various characters were doing odd things - there was more than a hint of Who shot Mr Burns? about proceedings - as the end of the broadcast approached (what they deuce was Rita up to?), all designed to keep us guessing.
Except it didn't with me - and I love Corrie - because I just wasn't arsed who got it. I'd like Rita to be okay because she's a good character and Barbara Knox has got ace comic timing, but there aren't too many others that I'd really hope are okay.
I think that's because the show's lost its way a bit lately, with the Tyrone/Stape storylines a prime example - does anyone really care? And now they have this - all rather EastEnder-ish - tram crash/cull. This isn't what Coronation Street does best, it doesn't need this sort of showiness.
Corrie's at its greatest when good actors are working with great scripts and direction - when it looks effortless: Bet and Alex, Steve and Caron, Tyrone and Kirk, Rita and Norris.
That's not what we got last night, as Nick and Leanne's bar blew up (I must have missed something there - how did that happen?) and everyone on the street rushed out, understandably, to see what the hoo-ha was. Something must be up when I'm actually willing death on some of them. Especially Stape, who was dialling 999 when the show's climax of death hit, then stopped. So presumably he's going to drag the body over and dump it with the rest. He's the angel of death with a set-square fringe that one.
Then came the coup-de-grace with the tram hurtling towards the bridge, which had been damaged by the blast. As the camera zoomed in on the driver as his tram smashed down on to the street it looked like some awful offcut from the old Dr Who.
Presumably Corrie don't have the budget to have made it look better, but if that's the case, don't bother. This is one of the best television programmes ever - it's not a shoot-em-up video game and doesn't need to try and be one.
Hopefully it got some more viewers, which I supposed is the point of all this (as well as celebrating 50 years of 't Street). But if that's what they want maybe ITV could try keeping it on at regular times and stop shifting it for shite football matches in the Champions League group fucking stages.
In other news I'd say, pre-smash, Leanne looked much better than normal in her glad rags - that big massive forehead bone wasn't as prominent as usual and the gozzyness appeared to be minimal.
All in all, a solid 6.5/10 for this viewer (the double bill not Leanne).

And for those who can't tell reality from fiction, there's this

Corrie no mates

Mad Molly off Corrie

Does everyone go to every function on Corrie? Last night was the same again - the entire cast at the christening of Chucky and Tyrone's baby, including Fiz and Mr-square-fringe John Stape, who I don't remember ever talking to the proud parents of little Jack. Doesn't anyone know anyone of their own age?
At the do - in the Rovers of course - it turns out Clur's binned Ashley cos he told her he had angina when he just had indegestion. Now she's taking the kids to live in France - what, all of it? - and he wants them back! She's mental - or has he forgotten - and now she wants to go and live in a field and eat cheese! Fingers crossed they all get blown up. Possibly as part of a future storyline.

What has happened to Becky off Corrie?

'There's sommat up wi' me eggs'

She used to be a laugh, even if the wide girl image was a bit dull. Now all she does is pull that horrible sulky face and wail about her barren ovaries and how she can't get a kid off the adoption shop. I don't think she's smiled this year.
This current storyline - where she's buying her sister Kylie's kid Max - is just horrendous. (Kylie, of course, is off to Cyprus with some lad she met on holiday there last week.)
Becky - well, Steve - handed over £10k for the lad up front with the promise the kid would be swapped for another £10k later. The plan being they bring the lad up and nobody ever finds out about the money. It's an awful storyline and puts Becky even further away from the character she was when she started out - plus she's sucking the life out of Steve.
Then there's Kev and Molly/Chucky and the baby paternity puzzle (what a choice, Kev or Tyrone), and John Snape (kidnapper, identity thief, body burier) getting stalked by that tweeny-looking woman who helped him dispose of the body of the fella whose identity John had adopted after he moved to Canada. With all that Corrie really should add up to a lot more than it does at the moment, but it's just boring, because it's lost sight of what made it brilliant - being funny. Coronation Street used to be, by a mile, the most consistently funny programme on telly. Now it's trying to out-EastEnders EastEnders. And no one needs that.

Five great Corrie double acts
Reg Holdsworth and Curly Watts
Derek Wilton and Norris Cole
Jack and Vera
Bet and Alec
Blanche and anyone