Stylish shoot marks Coronation St's 50th build-up

With just months to go before Coronation Street enjoys its landmark 50th birthday, the soap has released a glamorous photoshoot to promote a series of new stories. The ITV1 show is the most watched soap so far this year, averaging 9.9 million viewers per episode for the first half of 2010. This is up 4.2 per cent on the audience share during the same months in 2009. Bosses say the actors pictured will be central to the storylines in the build-up to the 50th. Many of them will be affected by the tragic and dramatic events in December when a tram crashes off the viaduct and changes residents' lives for ever. "Coronation Street has the ability to move with the times whilst retaining a unique sense of northern humour pathos, tragedy, conflict and drama," said producer Phil Collinson. "I have never worked on a show where the audience is so passionately involved in the lives of the characters on screen... and that brings with it a huge responsibility to make sure we keep their stories truthful and compelling." Behind the scenes film of the shoot is available to watch from Tuesday August 31 on Corrie's website. Click here to watch whatsontv.co.uk's weekly soaps video preview, the Soap Scoop

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.