Originality

Sometimes it bugs me when writers of a television show or even a movie take a previous movie and reuse the storyline. It shouldn't, really, because after all, how many stories are there? I think there's only a finite number, just changed with twists and changes of scenario and characters. Writers have been doing that with Shakespeare's stories for centuries.

Even Coronation Street isn't above reusing a plot from their own past or from other shows or movies and they're about to do it again. Warning! There are major spoilers ahead for all Corrie watchers, not just Canadians so look away now if you don't want to know!

In 2005 a movie called Transamerica was released. It's about a transsexual who is about to have gender reassignment surgery to become a woman and discovers that she fathered a child when she was younger. She meets the lad who is about 17 though doesn't tell him who or what she is. By the end of the movie, of course, he knows and it seems like they've made their peace with it and with each other.

Move that to Weatherfield. Yep, you guessed it. Hayley is going to discover that she fathered a son when she was still Harold. Hayley is only just 41 and the son is supposed to be in his early 20's according to a story in the U.K. paper, the Mirror. It must have been a confused and exploratory fumble when Harold was a teen if that's the case. Hayley will find out and then look for her son. She won't tell him at first who she really is. Thing is, when she and Roy first got together, we all assumed, including Roy, that *both* of them were virgins. Guess not. The Mirror sensationally predicts that this will shake the foundations of their marraige. Will Roy ever be able to trust a thing Hayley says again? sheesh. The Croppers have the best marraige in the show and i think if Hayley could manage to get past what she thought was Roy's fling with Tracy, he can get past this. (Of course Roy didn't fling with Tracy but for awhile, Hayley thought he did and after initially leaving him, she stuck by him all the way).

So there you have it. A copycat storyline straight out of the movies albeit a very good movie. It's a good twist to the classic soap storyline of discovering a child you didn't know you had (like Mike finding out that Susan didn't abort Adam). This is not a plot that is used often in Corrie. There have been a few incidents of people not revealing they've had previous children such as Bet's teenage pregnancy and Audrey having Stephen before Gail. Gordon Clegg grew up thinking Maggy was his mother when he was actually Betty's son but then a woman knows she's given birth. It's not uncommon for a woman to get pregnant and not tell the father, move away and he's never the wiser. That's what happened with Susan Barlow Baldwin. Of course in our show, that was really a case of the writers rewriting history which is annoying.

In this new storyline, it's not really rewriting history. This is in Hayley's distant past and ok, she lied to Roy and said she was a virgin. Well, as a woman, she was. And probably this experience that resulted in a child was her one and only as a man, too. I can well imagine for someone like Harold, that incident would have been embarassing and painful and best forgotten, and adolescent experiment, an attempt to be "normal". Happens a lot with people trying to figure out who they are, especially kids that think they're gay or, like Hayley, trans gendered.

All of Roy and Hayley's dramatic storylines seem to be handled well. The writing is always sensitive and the acting is always superb. I'm looking forward to it.