We should not be surprised that Coronation Street was hard to sell - especially by a 23-year old unknown who had only worked on radio. Someone quotes Hitchcock's definition of drama: 'life with the boring bits cut out'. "And you're giving us the boring bits only" he complains to the irrepressible Tony Warren.
Granada TV boss Sidney Bernstein (Steven Berkoff) weighs up the opposing arguments with suitable gravitas and gives it the nod. Up goes the familiar street-set, complete with cobbles, as specially demanded by Tony, and the casting sessions go ahead. Doris Speed and Violet Carson both remember Tony as a boy, not too favourably, but they are intrigued enough to give it a try for his sake.
The casting of the film itself is quite successful, whether or not you think it's cheating to bring on William Roache's son as the man himself; the family resemblance is strikingly evocative. Jane Horrocks turns in a good, brisk performance as the casting director, while Christian McKay as producer Harry Elton manages to give away a sly hint that Tony's fairly obvious gaiety may have played some part in swaying opinion. At one point, Tony tells Jessie Wallace (as a badly miscast Pat Phoenix) to stop being a drama queen, and she says "I will when you will".
One nice touch is the elderly tea-lady, giving an informal vote in favour, while catching a minute or two of the pilot-episode. But she thinks the original title 'Florizel Street' sounds too much like bathroom cleaner. This unofficial piece of audience research leads to 'Coronation Street', which I still think an odd name, unlikely to relate to 1953, but probably to an older and more deferential age.
