Albion Market
 1 9 8 5 - 1 9 8 6 (UK)
100 x 30 minute episodes
Contrived by Granada as a sister show to Coronation Street,
with the aim of lifting ITVs weekend schedules (it went out on
Fridays and Sundays), Albion Market arrived with a bang and
left with a whimper.
Much was made of the launch of this ambitious new series, but
its poor audience ratings (beaten by Open All Hours and
even Wogan!) resulted in some ITV regions moving it to even
less-adventurous time-slots.
Albion Market eventually shut up shop a year after it
began, after exactly 100 episodes.
Set in a covered Manchester market (actually a converted
Salford warehouse), the series monitored the complex lives of an
ethnically mixed group of stall holders.
At the forefront of the action were the likes of hunky,
cake-selling wide-boy Tony Fraser, his 19 year old girlfriend Lisa
O'Shea, her mum, Lynne Harrison who ran a domestic goods stall,
and Lynne's two-timing no-good husband Roy.
 Lam
Quoc Hoa and Ly Nhu Chan were Vietnamese refugee cousins, Raju and
Jaz Sharma were expelled Ugandan denim merchants, and Morris and
Miriam Ransome were the Jewish couple who ran the pottery
stall.
Derek Owen was the harassed market supervisor, Phil was the
West Indian who worked in the cafe, and Duane Rigg was the
market's teenage delinquent.
Towards the end of its run, two new personalities were
introduced in an attempt to give the show a lift.
Sixties pop singer Helen Shapiro played Viv, a hairdresser, and
former Til Death Us Do Part "Scouse git"
Tony Booth was seen as Ted Pilkington, licensee of the market's
local, The Waterman's Arms.
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