Pics: William Roache's son as young Ken Barlow

(This post was originally posted by Flaming Nora on the Coronation Street Blog in July, 2010, reposted to this blog with permission.)

There's some wonderful pictures from the filming of the Coronation Street docudrama called The Road to Coronation Street for BBC4. Here's William Roache's son James playing the young Ken Barlow in the show.

There's more great pictures at Daily Mail online.

James Roache turns up in Coronation Street this week as Ken Barlow's grandson.

The Road to Coronation Street out on DVD this week

Last year, in time for Coronation Street's 50th anniversary, a dramatization was made about how Tony Warren created Coronation Street. It was originally called Florizel Street which, legend has it, the Granada tea lady said sounded like a disinfectant so it was changed.

Tony Warren was a young writer for Granada and persuaded producer, Canadian Harry Elton, to let him write about what he knew, the North. The tv-movie is the story about that and casting the show, right up to the night it was aired live.

This week the program is released in Canada on DVD. Amazon has the release date as April 12 and lists it, at the moment, for $20.99 plus tax.  You really should get this, whether you order it or find it in a shop. It's most definitely worth it. I have seen it and it's nearly guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye.

The casting is superb and surprising in at least one respect. Eastenders' Jessie Wallace (Kat Slater Moon) plays Elsie Tanner! You might think that's a bit of a stretch but I'm telling you she was amazing! William Roache's son, James, played him, that is, the son played the father as a young man. Not just trick casting, either, he had  him down pat!

Even more edited to add: How remiss of me not to mention that the show was written by the amazing Daran Little! Daran has written many books about Coronation Street and was the show's archivist for years. He has written for the show as well. He has a great affection for it and it most certainly shows in a drama like this!

I wrote about it on my UK Corrie blog after I watched it.  There are a number of links in that post as well to some media interviews and other related things that make great reading. Dp check this dvd out, though we can always cross our fingers that CBC shows it sometime, too!

Edited to add: A commenter on this post (thank you!) pointed out that the Road To Coronation Street is available for viewing on CBC! Check it out here.