Classic Corrie for Canadians (and Americans)

A few years ago, three 10-disk boxed sets of Classic Coronation Street episodes were released in the UK. Each set covered a decade, the 60s, 70s and 80s and each set had 10 dvds, one per year, with 8 episodes on each disk. That's 240 episodes of Classic Corrie, in case you were doing the math. If you live in North America, you need a dvd player that works with Region 2 disks in order to see them. Luckily, I have one of those (you can get them but you can also "hack" them by entering a code on the remote that unlocks the machine to play any region. But i digress...) As I said, I have one of those players so I bought all three dvd sets.

Now, the folks at E1 Entertainment, a Canadian dvd distributor, have started to release some of these old episodes in North American format (Region 1)! What they've done is picked "best of" or perhaps their favourite episodes from these Classic moments to produce volumes of dvds that we here in Canada and the U.S. can play. They have three volumes so far, ranging from 1960 to 1966. Each volume has 2 disks and 8 episodes. I happened to get my hands on volume 3, the newest release that covers 1963 to 1966 and initially I thought only one of the episodes was the same as what was on the larger UK boxed set and was quite excited that these were new episodes. Oops, I guess I haven't watched my dvds in awhile. Upon checking with the episode summaries on the boxed set, I now realize that the episodes on the E1 volume are indeed taken from the original boxed set. This is after I ran out and bought volumes 1 and 2!

That's ok, though. Christmas is coming and I have some Corrie fans on my list.

The dvds have a little brief summary of each year before the episodes from that year, just to give you an idea of what's going on in Weatherfield. The episodes are digitally remastered so they are in pretty good shape as far as visuals and audio are concerned. Volume 3 contains episodes that see Emily Nugent (later Bishop) jilt the older Leonard Swindley, Dennis Tanner rescue Sheila Birtles from possible suicide, Val Barlow giving birth to twins Peter and Susan, Elsie and Ena rowing in the street, a day trip out to the Blue John mines, Ena getting arrested for shoplifting two tins of salmon, the aftermath of the collapse of Number 7 and the discovery of an unexploded bomb in Albert Tatlock's back yard.

For anyone that loves Corrie, this will give you a little taste of it's early days, with the legendary characters you've heard about. Volume 1 starts with the very first episodes and Volume 2 covers 1961 to early 1963. Amazon.ca has Volume 3 for $17.49 at the moment. They say the actual price is $29.99 but I have seen the dvds in WalMart and Future Shop for about $21.99 or thereabouts. You may also find them in Costco at a good price, or at other shops that sell dvds. Keep an eye out, I expect they will continue to work their way through the 1960s and hopefully, through the rest of the 1970s and 80s, too!