Coronation Street: The Golden Anniversary Collection and The Road To Coronation Street are out on ITV Studios Home Entertainment DVD. The 50th anniversary episode will be broadcast live on Thursday December 9, at 8pm
CLASSIC CORRIE
Ken attacks Deirdre
(1983)
Married twice and having survived countless affairs, sparks have flown often between Weatherfield’s Burton and Taylor. But never more intensely than when Ken (Bill Roache) discovered Deirdre’s (Anne Kirkbride) affair with Mike Baldwin (Johnny Briggs) – Corrie’s hottest eternal triangle – and throttled her against the door. Famously, Roache didn’t tell Kirkbride beforehand that he’d be grabbing her neck, resulting in a genuinely terrified response.
Hilda breaks down (1984)
Returning home after husband Stan’s funeral, Hilda Ogden (Jean Alexander) sits alone at her table, her legendary flying ducks “muriel” behind her. When she opens his glasses case, revealing the NHS specs never to be worn again, the tears come and don’t stop coming. Possibly the most moving moment in TV drama history.
Roy and Hayley’s (first) wedding
(1999)
It says everything about Corrie that a trainspotter and his transsexual wife could become the show’s moral compass. Roy (David Neilson) and Hayley’s (Julie Hesmondhalgh) blessing ceremony produced a sublime episode, as Hayley’s Great Uncle Bert gently tried to talk her out of it: “Tell you this, Harold. Why don’t you go and put your trousers on and come home with me and your auntie? After we’ve had us tea, we can walk down to the Wheat Sheaf and have a game of dominoes.” Eat your heart out, Alan Bennett.
Curly and Raquel see in the millennium
(2000)
On Christmas Day 1994, Curly Watts (Kevin Kennedy), the astronomy-obsessed supermarket manager, led his true love, the lovely, breathy, slightly dim Raquel Wolstenhulme (Sarah Lancashire), up to the telescope in his loft, and pointed out the star he’d had named after her. She left him in 1996, but, on millennium night, she appeared again, speaking French, to tell him he was a father – and ask for a divorce. They gazed at the stars one last time, and he consented.
Richard Hillman confesses
(2002)
A superb two-hander – claustrophobic, electrifying, unsettling, hilarious – as the psychotic financial adviser (Brian Capron) comes clean to wife Gail (Helen Worth) about his string of murders, hoping she’ll understand. She responds: “You’re Norman Bates with a briefcase.” Thankfully, after Hillman died while trying to drown her entire family in a canal, Gail lived happily ever after. Sort of.