Number One review – four hours of guaranteed, fun | TV & radio

TChannel 5’s new (I know! Me too – but yes, it’s still there) Number One Fan series stars two Coronation Street graduates from the days when the soap was still good. My prime Corrie viewing years were the early 90s to early 00s. Which means I was there when it seemed like the crowns were about to pass from the queens like Rita, Vera and Bet Lynch to their noble successors, like Shelley Unwin, Karen McDonald, Fiz – and maybe to a young Battersby or two, if the family learned to stop screaming and give us some northern wisdom. Alas, their reign was short-lived and now there is no doubt that Coronation Street is worse than ever. We don’t have time to go into that now. Suffice it to say: the presence of Sally Lindsay (Shelley, as she was) and Jill Halfpenny (Rebecca Hopkins, of the same time, as Martin Platt’s love interest) is enough to guarantee you a good time.

Here, Halfpenny plays Lucy Logan, a lovable daytime TV personality with her own show, a little less, a contract to support her clothes on the screen, and a new line of luxury products that comes out under her name, in collaboration with the charity that favors the brand. Apart from the monthly box of expensive truffles that are actually made from compost (I want to know who took the first bite and realized this; a week of bad work for someone, I guess) sent by an unknown stranger, life is good.

Even when he ends up with his bag in a large parking lot there is someone to save him – Donna (Lindsay), a veteran and fan of the show. He happily accepts invitations to film and visit the studio (“This is the best day of my life!”), but declines the opportunity to be interviewed. When Lucy sends him off with skin care products, a designer jacket and a thank you note, she tells him not to be a stranger and to come back any time. That would be a mistake.

There’s Donna, up front and loud at a music video for weeks later and probably outside of Lucy’s daughter’s school, though Lucy thinks she might have been wrong. It’s easy to misinterpret the many flowers and a lipsticked message on her bedroom mirror – “You inspire me xxx” – left in Lucy’s house while she’s out.

Since then, things are getting worse and worse. This is not a serious drama – it lives or dies by its plot and the fun you have on the rollercoaster – so I want to be as unobtrusive as possible. If you’ve watched the weeknight dramas before, I think it won’t spoil the suspense too much if I say that Donna’s presence in the parking lot before the birth is not a coincidence (“Change the scene, I know it’s you, wild cow”), and that she has a deeper, darker business than chasing her frivolous jacket. they despise, and want to avenge great sins.

If I were a betting woman, I’d put a lot of money on the truffle deliveryman – who we see only occasionally, usually involving him yelling at the Lucy Live show or shooting arrows at a picture of Lucy’s face – to be there too.

In addition to mixing a man in financial trouble, a son drawn on the Internet in an environmentalist group that goes to violence, and a daughter who is of the right age to ride a car that looks like it is driven by a Mummy driver, four hours of harmless fun are guaranteed. Its success depends largely on having two leaders who can sell anything and legally cannot tell lies, but what is happening around them is not surprising. Halfpenny or Lindsay or both are close to every event and get the job done. If they can find a way to return to Coronation Street sometime and recreate that, what a wonderful world it would be.