Wednesday 22 June 2016

Binned

(This post was originally posted by Scott Willison on the Coronation Street Blog in June 2016.)

I was watching Friday's Corrie, hoping that if I hung around long enough something interesting might happen, when my attention was grabbed during a scene between Zee and Alya.  I spotted the bin at the back of the scene.

Yes.  That's how fascinated I was.  I went bin spotting.


The first thing that grabbed me was its position.  That's not a very wide windowsill for a bin to go on.  And who puts a bin up that high anyway?  You're just asking for spillage.

The second thing that grabbed me was that it said "City Council" on it.  Is Weatherfield a City, I wondered?  It was always a Borough Council in the past.  Had it changed?  After all, Salford, the place Weatherfield replaced in Greater Manchester, is a city now.  Maybe they had a change as well and it just wasn't mentioned.

But then my confusion deepened.  Computer, ZOOM AND ENHANCE.


Admittedly, it's harder to see when it's not on a 55 inch LED screen.  But that definitely says Salford under the flap of bin bag.  That's a Salford City Council wastebin.  It's a bin from the real world, and it could destroy everything.

The show fractures around the bin.  There is no Salford in Coronation Street's world: Salford is Weatherfield, Weatherfield is Salford.  This bin cannot exist in Weatherfield and yet, there it is.  It's crossed over from another world, another universe, another galaxy.  The Nazir's kitchen is now the fulcrum of a collapsing fiction.  What next?  Audrey calling Gail "Helen"?  The viaduct toppling over in a strong wind?  The beer in the pub turning out to be non-alcoholic?  The whole show could fall apart in front of our eyes, destroyed by this one, misplaced bin.  All is a lie.

Or alternatively nothing will happen and I'm just being melodramatic.  One of the two.



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3 comments:

Sd said...

Now if I remember correctly , some guy on the show in the last few years (I am thinking Jason maybe) said "I am just a Salford boy " ...or something like that. It was said twice
I remember that because I had just visited Salford several years in a row .
I am not sure that weatherfield was ever a replacement for Salford .

Sd said...


Found this

http://tvor-downeast.blogspot.ca/search?q=salford

Tvor said...

Yes that's right. There was an outcry at the time because historically on the show and stated by some of the earlier writers and producers, Weatherfield represented Salford, it wasn't an addition to the towns that were in the Manchester area.

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