In the last 48 hours, I have had the pleasure of watching Eric & Ernie and The Road To Coronation Street, a pair of biographical dramas about two of the most successful UK TV shows of all time. Laced with Northern working class humour that had me laughing out loud. Without a doubt, these are two of the best dramas I have seen – and that’s from someone who loved The Morecombe & Wise Show but never watched an episode of Coronation Street in his life!
Both were well written, superbly produced and played by exceptional casts; a rare combination these days, it seems. Daniel Rigby and Bryan Dick delivered stand out performances as the eponymous Eric and Ernie, with Victoria Wood and Jim Moir providing the backstory of Eric’s Mum and Dad. While The Road To Coronation Street had a stellar cast of familiar talent from the last 30 years of British TV, it was Jessie Wallace, a former soap actress playing a soap actress from the preceding generation, who convincingly stole the show as Pat Phoenix.
There is very little that makes me homesick but the quality of these dramas does make me wonder what else I might be missing on the television in Blighty.
