THERE'S a lot of fuss being made this week about a certain TV soap – you'll see from our On This Day section at the foot of the facing page that the first episode of Coronation Street went out 60 years ago today, although it was not networked until the following year.

Corrie is often referred to as a gritty northern drama, but to some that soubriquet really belongs to a short-lived yet fondly remembered soap set some 200 miles further north – STV's Garnock Way, which launched on April 1, 1976.

The ambition was to produce a series for the ITV network, though in the event only four regions took it on. It was deemed too dark and miserable for popular consumption – ironic, when you consider some of the stuff served up in Corrie over the years.

The show was set in a mining community in a town "halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh" – it was shot largely in Airth and Fallin, and starred the likes of Jackie Farrell, Gerry Slevin, Eileen McCallin and Dorothy Paul. Writing on March 30, the Glasgow Herald's Peggie Phillips had been optimistic: "There is a whole new scene for the public to worry about: the new towns, the oil developments; the unemployment in Scotland's traditional industries on which the life of many small towns were built.

"There is also a sort of psychic revulsion from cites, a mysterious yearning to bury the head in the simple past of cobbled streets, hedgerows, hand-made objects and mercat cross life. Garnock Way is specially tailored to take all the new trends to its bosom."

David Johnstone, STV's head of programmes, is quoted as saying that the company had spent "a lot of money, but not huge sums" on the series, adding that he hoped it would be a long runner with which people can identify: "You'll recognise the folk – they're everybody."

Sadly, viewers down south may have recognised them, but they didn't want to welcome them into their living rooms – the last episode of Garnock Way aired on July 12, 1979.