Music montages too much for Coronation Street?

Are there now too many music montages in Coronation Street? With both of the recent bank holiday Sunday 'specials' of Corrie featuring musical montages - where shots are cut to music, pop video style - and some of last year's 50th anniversary episodes culminating in similar scenes, viewers may well be of the opinion that the soap is moving a little too far away from it's traditional format. The Sunday episode during the royal wedding weekend featured a montage of Sean, boyfriend Marcus and Sean's son Dylan enjoying the sights of London to the sounds of London Calling by the Clash (noticeably mimicking a scene in the film Trainspotting) and last Sunday's Blackpool episode saw a brief montage cut to 'She's So Lovely' by Scouting For Girls. There were similar montages last year - shots of street residents as Rita sang in the Rovers, for instance - and it's now starting to look like they may well become a regular feature.

There's no doubt that, correctly handled, montages can have great impact but two in two weeks seems a little like laziness. The recent Sunday episodes felt like hastily knocked together spin-offs to begin with so perhaps the montages were included as a means of filling some time in half-hearted programmes? Certainly these scenes are a million miles away from Corrie's established style. Let's not forget that the soap was created to be a realistic look at a Northern back street but the programme makers now appear set on making it appear more like a pop video. Maybe they're hoping to sell the repeats to MTV?

Is Corrie changing too much? Are the producers right to try and update the format? Please let us know what you think.