‘I Could Have Been Like Lou Barlow, But I’m More Like Ken Barlow’: Long-Stayers as Heroes or Failures

In the long-running British TV soap Coronation Street, there is one character, Ken Barlow, who has been there from the beginning. He was seen in the first episode in 1960 as a new university graduate, the first in the street, returning to his family in Weatherfield a fictional working-class region in North-East England; 46 years later he is still a fixture in the show. Ken Barlow has a popular reputation as being rather boring although, in the way of soaps, his fictional life has not been uneventful. He has been married four times (twice to the same woman), widowed twice and divorced once in addition to having 27 girl-friends. He has had three children and one step-daughter who have drifted in and out of the series and had a long-running feud with another long-serving character, Mike Baldwin. The show has changed around him from the grainy black and white live show in the 1960s, which was influenced by the working class ‘kitchen sink’ plays and films of the late fifties to the more glamorous and youth oriented show now, which remains, even in this digital age, one of the most watched shows on British television. The actor who plays Ken, William Roache, has also achieved a remarkable feat in a transient and insecure profession of only ever having played the one role in his career and, indeed, being so typecast in this role, it would be impossible to imagine him playing anything else. He has been well rewarded, of course, but it seems to be an odd accolade just to be rewarded and recognized for ‘being there’ longer than anyone else.