TV Pick of the Week: Sunday Theatre: The Road To Coronation Street

The Road to Coronation Street dramatises the TV executives' initial struggles. Photo / Supplied

"You have no idea what it's like to be standing in something that has only existed in your head," says Coronation Street creator Tony Warren as he marvels at the set Granada Television studios have built.

Fifty years ago, to the day, the characters he had developed in his head were first broadcast to Britain.

A year later, Coronation Street was the highest-rating show in the country.

This week, to celebrate its 50th birthday, Sunday Theatre is screening a drama that plays out Warren's struggle to make a show that no one wanted.

It was written by Daran Little, a long-time archivist on Coronation Street who later became a scriptwriter.

Warren, an ambitious, 23-year-old writer, is played by British actor David Dawson. After being turned down by the BBC, he presented a script he had written about the lives of regular people living on a back street in Manchester to Granada Television. He had been working for the Manchester-based network since his acting career hit a brick wall, but was uninspired by the projects they had him working on.

Visionary Canadian-born producer Harry Elton (Christian McKay) loved the concept of Florizel Street, as it was originally titled, because he understood the value of television reflecting its viewers. Had it not been for Elton, the script may never have progressed from the paper it was typed on. It didn't excite the company heads in the slightest.

Sidney Bernstein (Steven Berkoff) and his brother Cecil (Henry Goodman), the senior executives at the television network, thought the idea of ordinary Manchester people on television was preposterous. Who wanted to hear Northern slang and see their dingy little back-street homes?

Elton persisted, saying Warren's script had found the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Eventually the executives agreed to a pilot episode, and the mad hunt for Northern English actors began.

Warren was not willing to compromise his vision. He wanted cobbled streets, brass ducks on the floral wallpaper of homes and actors the viewers would believe in. He drove the casting and wardrobe departments dippy with his insistence that the characters look like anyone on the street.

Eventually Doris Speed (played by Celia Imrie) was cast as Annie Walker, Pat Phoenix (Jessie Wallace) as Elsie Tanner and the most difficult to cast of them all, Violet Carson (Lynda Baron) as the show's resident battleaxe, Ena Sharples.

William Roache, who has played Ken Barlow for the past 50 years, is played by Roache's son, James. In this dramatic re-enactment of the time, William is portrayed as a cocky young actor who claims he only agreed to do the Coronation Street pilot because he had a bit of down-time - he was waiting for his big break in London. The real William Roache never left the show and is now the longest-standing member of the cast.

James Roache says that The Road to Coronation Street is not just for fans of the hit soap. "Even if you're not a Coronation Street fan you'll still love this as it's a gripping story about a young man's determination to get his show out there on the television despite what he is told. He fights for what he truly believes in. Mix that in with a cast of some of the best-loved actors and brilliant directing and you've got the ingredients for an absolute stomper of a show."

LOWDOWN

When: Sunday, 8.30pm
Where: TV One

-TimeOut