Daisy Midgeley’s wedding day begins with a daydream, soundtracked by Adore You by Harry Styles. She’s standing in her wedding dress outside The Rovers, having just married Daniel Osbourne. Then the blue skies cloud over and the daydream transitions into a nightmare as a limo door opens and a chauffeur walks towards her. It’s her stalker, Justin Rutherford. Daisy is snapped back to the reality of her bathroom by Jenny Connor calling her name. The Harry Styles song is still playing on a radio, proving that some nightmares never end. Daisy is enraged that her eye is bloodshot and she blames Glenda Shuttleworth’s eye cream. Gemma Winter suggests an eye patch, like Rihanna wore in 2008.
As one thing after another goes wrong, Daisy feels her wedding day is cursed. Ryan Connor comes up with a plan to sort everything out. It’s weirdly reminiscent of a sequence in the film Goodfellas, where mobster Henry Hill described a hectic day that included going to the hospital, making a cocaine pickup and delivering gun silencers – all of which he had to do while being followed around by a helicopter. On the plus side, Henry didn’t need to take a cake to Rochdale.
At the hotel where the wedding is going to be held, there’s been yet another mix-up and everyone mucks in to put the chairs out. ‘Are we doing Oops Up Side Your Head?’ jokes Sarah Barlow. Her husband Adam points out, somewhat pedantically, that the dance for The Gap Band”s 1979 song is done on the floor.
At The Rovers, in a shocking scene that rivals even Goodfellas’ most violent moments, psycho Justin throws acid at Daisy. Ryan bravely steps in front of her and takes the full force of the attack in his face. At the hotel, a cover of the Goo Goo Dolls song Iris by Vitamin String Quartet plays and we cut back and forth between the wedding guests and the horrors at the pub.
Glenda knows a captive audience when she sees one (there’s no escape from a cruise ship) and she’s keen to entertain everyone while they’re waiting. A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square is her song suggestion, but Adam and Daniel’s polite refusal means a Shuttleworth doesn’t sing in the hotel. A phone call to Jenny brings news about the awful events at The Rovers, to the accompaniment of Midnite String Quartet’s version of I Will Always Love You. The aftermath of the incident is punctuated by an echoey background roar that focuses on the interiority of the characters (especially Daisy), edging into territory explored by David Lynch in films like Eraserhead and The Elephant Man. If The British Soap Awards decide to introduce a sound design category, Coronation Street should walk it for the way sound has enhanced the mood and tone of this episode.
Coronation Street episode 10912/13. Originally aired 27th March 2023.
