Has anyone else noticed a slight change in the atmosphere down Weatherfield way of late? Maybe it is just a general comparison of the episodes we are watching now to those somewhat weary ones we were dragging ourselves through earlier in the year. A new broom (sorry Kate for likening you to a cleaning implement) can sometimes have that effect in any workplace. People react to change and for a time, there is a new found vivacity, an unbridled joy in life. Here's hoping it lasts.
Not that everyone has been affected by this joie de vivre. Take Sean Tully for example. Seriously, someone just take him and have a word. Over the past few years Sean seems to have become a bit of a non-character, fading into the shadows or perhaps Eileen's cleavage. When he first toddled onto the cobbles about four hundred years ago, Sean was a breath of fresh air and a bit of a laugh. Not anymore.
I almost spat my barm cake across the room at the knowledge that Sean was only just celebrating his 40th birthday. Seriously? Then again, he fits in with all of the other unlikely ages offered up by Street residents. The Audrey-Gail-Nick scenario is pretty bizarre with Nick looking almost as old as his grandmother. Plus we are expected to believe that Rita is in her eighties when in fact, she's 109 years old. Bless her.
Over the years, Sean has often been the recipient of unfair criticism, usually along the lines that his character was pandering to some out-dated notion of camp. A Mr Humphries for the new Millennium. A load of old rot of course. Camp exists in many, glorious forms and you only have to tune in to an edition of First Dates on Channel 4 to see it thrive. So we'll have none of that thank you very much. Besides, he's now billeted with Norris who's the biggest old queen in residence at the moment.
No, Sean's problem is that he's terminally dull. He exists on a rollercoaster of relationship ups and downs. Sean gives his all to the new man in his life which always seems to crush the life out of them. For anyone else this would form part of a learning curve. However, Sean just hits the reset button and starts all over again. He weeps, he sulks, he lashes out, he utters a few waspish one-liners and then, like a Lidl Bet Lynch, re-emerges, stately as a galleon, behind the Rovers bar. Then off we go again.
Despite his forty (yes, I'm still not a believer) years, Sean's mindset is seemingly stuck in his teenage mode. Watching a middle-aged man immersing himself in strops and tantrums doesn't make for easy or pleasurable viewing. Thankfully he's extracted himself from M'lady of the Miseries household (and the sooner Eileen gets shipped off to Cell Block H for fraud, the better) so without her to feed his moods, Sean might just emerge from this a little stronger.
If Sean is to stick around then he needs to learn from past mistakes, not continue treading the same tear-sodden ground forever and a day. Give him a new man by all means but let's see him approach a relationship in a calm, reasonable manner. Maybe people will warm to him more. If not, then it's eternal afternoons of sherry and malicious gossip with Norris.
David Bridgman.
Twitter @bridglondon
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