Here's a toast to our 'Vera'

I think I got into Coronation Street when I was studying for exams in university. In fact “Corrie”, as the English call it, was quite a favorite among students at UBC at the time. Anyway, this only comes to mind because I saw an item that called attention to the fact that the actress who plays Vera Duckworth (Shown above with sometimes devoted husband, Jack) is retiring from the street at age 68.

Some, of course, are already saying that the ‘street’ won’t be the same without her. But, they said the same thing about the Ogdens, Elsie Tanner, Ray Langton, Len Fairclough, Annie Walker, Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell, and so forth.

The one they haven’t yet said it about is Ken Barlow. That is because he, or the actor playing him, has been with the series since the very first episode. In other words, he’s had a very secure acting career, if not a particularly varied one.

Ken Barlow. I think he’s been married about 14 times by now, which isn’t bad ‘bon vivancy’ for a guy who’s kind of a dweeb. I was once rather insulted when my mother said long ago that I reminded her of Ken Barlow. I asked her to explain. She said: “He was a teacher once, kind of an intellectual, became a journalist, and had an eye for attractive women.” Well, except for the foregoing criteria, I’ll have you know I’m not at all like Ken Barlow.

Anyway, CS continues to soldier on, though I rarely watch these days. Actually, I don’t like what it has become. In the old days it was a study of a stolid working-class neighborhood in Manchester. Folk were poor, but predominantly decent. They lived in grotty little flats and row-houses, didn’t have much in the way of pounds, shillings and pence to rub together; worked their asses off, sometimes drank too much at the Rover’s Return, sometimes screwed people they weren’t supposed to, sometimes married, sometimes divorced, sometimes died. Very much like real life of the day. Nowadays I find CS revolves too much around young people with too much money and too few brains, a non-existent values system, constantly ‘at it’ sexually with a host of sleazoids, and so much more. Hmm. Maybe still like real life, 2007 style. What they need is an Ena Sharples to box their ears.

I found when I lived in England many years ago that there is a geographic demographic to CS. Those in the North and Midlands love it, those in the south loathe it (with the exception of the Queen, who’s a big fan.

“Dreadful people,” remarked the stodgy husband of my second cousin of the inhabitants of the street. He was born and raised and lived all his 70-odd years in Bristol, well in the south. He snobbishly hated the ‘north’ and would never venture there. “They don’t even close the lavatory doors when they’re using it; that’s if they have one,” he once told me. How would you know?, thought I, since you’ve never been there. Anyway, CS was never allowed to fill the screen of their telly.

Coronation Street first saw the light-of-day in 1960, so it’s nearing its half-century mark. Not many TV shows can make such a claim; especially not ones that its creators were surprised and delighted to see lasting a single season.

* CS trivia: Davy Jones, lead singer of the Monkees once play a brief juvenile part as Ena Sharples’ grandson.