Coronation Street is turning 50.  That makes it the longest running TV soap opera currently in production.  For those of you who only know me through the Gumboot (and maybe even some of you that know me beyond the Gumboot), it might surprise you to know that I’m a fan of Coronation Street.  I’m actually a 4th generation Corrie fan (along with my brother), following the lead(s) of my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. While I’ll spare you the details of the latest scandals, I’m going to briefly reflect on community on the street.

Set in the fictional town of Weatherfield, outside of Manchester in northern England, Coronation Street follows the lives of characters that live and work on the street.  Corrie depicts a working-class street that is a mix of residential working class row-homes, a factory, and commercial businesses including a pub, corner-shops, a butcher, a bookies, a café, fast-food, a mechanic and a cabbie.  Everything you need for everyday life is right there on the street.  You only really need to leave for the hospital, jail, or church.  But this type of neighbourhood was already scarce in 1960, when the series first aired, and is practically non-existent now.  Post-war suburbanization means that most of those working-class industrial neighbourhoods were replaced by larger residential homes where you need to rely on driving to get to all the everyday services you need.  But the kind of compact mix-used, live-work-play neighbourhood that Coronation Street offers, is what planners now trying to recreate in neighbourhood design.  So Coronation Street reflects both the kind of neighbourhood from the past that we are nostalgic about but also that we’re trying to build again as a response to social isolation and land and resource scarcity.

The characters on Coronation Street are ordinary people.  By this, I am not referring to them being statistically ordinary.  In fact, the rate of adultery, divorce, domestic violence, murder, teenage pregnancy, etc. would be better described as alarming (it is a soap opera after all).  But compared to other soaps, Corrie offers character that look like ordinary people, have the types of jobs that ordinary people have, and even many of the problems that ordinary people have.  They are not all young, rich, white, beautiful people like the characters found on most soap operas.  And this is one of the things that made Corrie appealing to audiences from early on.  In addition to the many longstanding characters, the cast has also changed to reflect the make-up of northern-England.  Corrie even pushes the boundaries, like in 1998 when then first transsexual character, Haley, appeared on the show (before the first gay character was introduced in 2003).

Corrie’s characters form quite a tight knit community.  Everyone knows everyone even when you’d never expect it.  That portrays a type community that doesn’t actually exist in urban or suburban communities.  The reality is that because of density, lifestyle and preference some, if not most, neighbours are acquaintances or strangers rather than members of a close community.  From my experience, Corrie is closer to presenting a rural community.  Coronation Street has both the positives of community cohesion and concerns for each other’s well-being, along with the more negative aspects of rural communities including the prevalence of gossip and longstanding grudges.  It again draws on our nostalgia to be part of such a community, where you can know all your neighbours and all of their business.

Do you have a favourite fictional community?  And how does it reflect past, present or ideal communities?