Textual Analysis: Coronation Street

Hey Guys :)

In today's post it's all about analysing Coronation Street


In order to help me create my own tv show, I am going to analyse three shows which have some similarities to my own show that way I may incorporate different elements of each and create a show which follows the correct codes and conventions of an ITV drama/soap opera.

If you didn't already know Coronation Street is a soap opera shown on ITV. The show focuses on the ordinary lives of working-class citizens whom live in Coronation Street in a fictional town called  Weatherfield in inner-city Salford. The show follows different characters through the high and the lows and the ground-breaking moments of their lives.

As Britain's longest running soap, which has been aired since 1960, there's a constant pressure to create something exciting which will entertain the target audience so they continue watching the show for years to come. This is where the codes and conventions come into play.

Over the years the show must have gone through hundreds of different narratives and experimented with multiple different codes, in order to discover what works well with the nature of their show and what will get a good response from the audiences. I have then looked for one of their episodes with an interesting plotline which I could then watch on ITVHub and later I took note of some of the codes and conventions used within the episode.

I should mention beforehand that I only wrote about one of the storylines within this episode and that was the one to do with the death of someone because that's a similar storyline I would like to explore in my own show. 


Scene 1

During the opening sequence there are four adults in the room, three women and one man. The adults are preparing to go to a court hearing where they will discuss the life of a loved one leading up to his death in order to make sense of why he commit suicide. One of the women leave and the man shows her out which brings us to this scene.

In this scene as soon as the people exit and the door shuts the brunette rushes over to blonde who is ironing and tells her "Eva's back". Although I haven't seen many episodes of Coronation Street in the past and I had no idea who Eva was, but through this scene I pieced together this:

Later on in the episode: They have arrived at the inquest.

The brunette women in this shot was talking with a group of other women although they were partially giving her the silent treatment. she mentions the guys name and that bring us to this scene. 

Later on in the episode: The inquest has began.

At the start of this scene the judge(?) starts the scene by say "The purpose of this inquest is to answer 4 questions..."  As she states the four questions the camera cuts-away and begins to pan to those in court. Then right before someone enters she say and "...who died". 

At the end of the episode: Eva is speaking

When we return to this storyline, Eva is sitting at the front speaking with the judge about the last moment she had spent with the guy who's inquest they were at.

I would also like to add that I believe that the guy in that last picture, killed the other guy. He looks way too suspicious.

What I've Learnt

- Reaction shots are key. They are both entertaining and informative.

- Continuity editing was used and the editing was rather slow. Although there were technically four different storylines going on, there was around 1 - 2 minuets assigned per scene to each storyline, so that we'd visit a story roughly 3 or 4 times throughout the show.
This meant that quite a bit would be covered in that time, so there would be quite a bit of talking but not much moving about or action. Then again it's a soap opera so I don't know what else I expected.

- There were a few pans within the episode or some eyeline match shots which would help increase tension or just simply move the focus to a character that may have been talked about.

- As for camera work, there was a significant number of medium/close-ups, in order for the audience to see characters reactions.

- There wasn't much to be said for audio codes, apart from the theme song there was no asynchronous or non-diegetic sound. Probably because they weren't need for the scenes and it would of been best to focus on people's conversations rather than get distracted by background music because then you could miss something.

- Wide shots were also used quite a bit to showcase the different settings. This helped to differentiate the separate storylines as they would generally happen in different areas.

- While there were four different narratives going on, there was the overall background narrative, which is that everyone in the town is somehow linked, or connected to one another and sometimes the storylines would overlap because of this.

- As for representation, there didn't seem to be much diversity, unlike other soap operas like EastEnders. I didn't really see any person of colour apart from the judge, but at least they have given her a good job and she wasn't made into a stereotype. There was also a homosexual man staring in one of the other storylines and although he was quite flamboyant, he wasn't an outright stereotype, thus making him  a fairly good representative for the LGBTQ+ community.

- Truthfully speaking though, the lack of character diversity was rather disappointing, then again maybe it's just trying to be "realistic" in the sense that it's a small town so it would be unlikely for people from other countries to reside there.

- As for the genre, the show included secrets, some drama, a death, plot twists and a (minor) argument. These are what I believe are some of the conventions of a soap opera. 

If I were to apply theorists to this show I would say that it conforms to Steve Neale's genre theory because of how it seems to repeat certain techniques or even themes within it's show because it knows that those are the things which attract audiences. For example they include a death because it works for other soap operas, it work for them and as long as they change the means of the death then it will consistently entertain the viewers.

In terms of narrative then you could apply Barthes theory of codes to the show as it does create enigma codes often throughout the show to keep the audience hooked.

I was going to also say Todorov's theory but that's a slight stretch because of it's different storylines, however, with the story line I looked at in particular, if all other scenes were removed then it would have followed that pattern.



Anyways, let me know what you think about the show, but that's all for now folks :)