The story of how the longest-running drama series on British television first made it onto our screens was told in The Road to Coronation Street (BBC Four). Its creator Tony Warren (David Dawson) was just 23 when he presented his vision of a drama with “dirt under its fingernails” to bosses at the Granada studios in Manchester, but there were many roadblocks to be overcome before the show’s first transmission in December, 1960.
This 75-minute film explored how the former child actor saw his idea find its way past the prevailing snobbery towards characters with regional accents. Studio head Sidney Bernstein (Steven Berkoff) took a lot of persuading. The dramatisation of Corrie’s difficult birth was, despite the odd soapy moment, compelling. Dawson, too, for his services to knitwear modelling alone, was great fun as Warren. From the first time we saw him checking his reflection in a mirror, there was no doubt that the writer who created some of the great women characters of British television was gay. This was very much his story.
What inevitably happened, though, was that the lead was ultimately blown off the screen by his own creations, as the plot morphed from plucky underdog success story to something that more closely resembled The Magnificent Seven. Instead of putting together a team of hired gunfighters, Warren was seen assembling, one by one, a cast of Northern battleaxes, each more formidable than the last.
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