Raquel Watts
Encyclopedia
Raquel Catherine Watts is a fictional character
from the British ITV
soap opera Coronation Street
, played by Sarah Lancashire
.
father and heavy-drinking mother, estranged from her father after partaking in semi-nude modelling. She is introduced as an assistant at Weatherfield
's Bettabuys supermarket, working alongside Curly Watts (Kevin Kennedy
), with whom she begins a relationship. They separate when Raquel develops feelings for a photographer and moves to London to become a model. Disappointed by the calibre of work she is offered, Raquel returns to Weatherfield and becomes a barmaid at the Rovers Return Inn
. She moves in with local bookmaker Des Barnes
(Philip Middlemiss
) and they develop a sexual relationship, but he evicts her when his estranged wife Steph (Amelia Bullmore
) returns to him. Landlady Bet Gilroy (Julie Goodyear
) allows Raquel to move into the Rovers. She dates Weatherfield County FC striker Wayne Farrell (Ray Polhill), but breaks up with him and pushes him into a canal when she discovers that he is cheating on her. Des and Raquel repair their relationship and move back in together, but break up once more when Des has an affair with Raquel's workmate Tanya Pooley (Eva Pope
).
Raquel renews her friendship with Curly, who falls in love with her and proposes. Although Raquel accepts, at her engagement party she admits to Des that she loves him and not Curly, who she views as a best friend. She decides to break off the engagement. The following year, Curly's boss Leo Firman (John Elmes) attempts to rape Raquel. She is able to escape and tells Curly, who attacks Leo. Raquel gives evidence of sexual harassment against him, and Leo is fired. She and Curly grow closer in the aftermath. Though Raquel sleeps with Des again, he makes it clear that it was just a one-night-stand, and Raquel accepts that she will never mean as much to Des as he does to her. Later that day, Raquel proposes to Curly. They have a quick registry office wedding, and it is not until their honeymoon that Raquel admits what happened with Des. Curly forgives her, and their married life is initially happy. It does not last, however, and within a year Raquel leaves Curly to accept an aromatherapy job in Kuala Lumpur
.
Four years later, Raquel visits Curly seeking a divorce. She reveals that she was pregnant when she left, and they now have a daughter, Alice Diana Watts. She tells Curly that she worked as a housekeeper in France following Alice's birth, where she fell in love with her employer, by whom she is now pregnant and wishes to marry. Curly agrees to a divorce, giving Raquel's new relationship his blessing.
. His starting point was Bettabuys supermarket—a Northern "everyman" chain—and a conceptualisation of characters that might populate it. A Miss Bettabuy competition was suggested as a humorous storyline, with comedy derived from the contradiction between a beauty contest and the "prosaic and mundane" setting of Bettabuys. From this, the name Raquel Wolstenhulme was devised, contrasting the glamorous, Hollywood connotations of 'Raquel' with the down-to-earth Northern surname 'Wolstenhulme'. This glamorous/mundane contradiction was then encapsulated in the character.
Raquel filled the dizzy blonde
and tart with a heart stereotypes in Coronation Street. Her defining characteristics included her "short skirts, big hair and ... even bigger heart." Alongside her bouffant hair and short skirts, Raquel's costume commonly included high-heels and a great deal of make-up, reflecting her glamour model aspirations. The Guardian
Nancy Banks-Smith
described her as having an "almost saintly idiocy", and Dominic Maxwell of The Times
wrote that her "comic brio and emotional tenderness" made her a standout character. Ben Thompson of The Independent
deemed her most affecting qualities to be her "hauteur, kindness and dignity in the face of defeat." AOL
's Anne Richardson called Raquel "the very definition of loveable", writing: "Always trying to better herself, but without any social climbing snobbery, she longed for a better life whilst always seeming to be resigned to the fact that she'd never actually get there. Sweetly naive and tragically vulnerable, we longed for her to find her happy ending and our hearts broke every time hers did."
Lancashire initially had reservations about Raquel's characterisation, and believes that the writers were uncertain how to use her in early episodes. She found her two-dimensional, with an unappealing "acidic side" which could have resulted in Raquel becoming the "street bitch" had it been embellished. She took it upon herself to highlight Raquel's potential, playing against what had been written to make her more comic, evoking the sympathy of the audience. Thereafter, Raquel was often used for comedic purposes, though Lancashire attempted to keep her from becoming simply a figure of fun. During one storyline, she was taught French by Weatherfield teacher Ken Barlow
(William Roache
), leading to what Richardson named one of the series' best comedy scenes:
The Independent
Deborah Ross feels that Lancashire bought "vulnerability and heartache and real tragedy and painful gullibility" to Raquel, citing the French lesson with Ken and the pride in Raquel's response as an example of her amusing but sad brilliance.
In her book Soap Opera, Dorothy Hobson suggests that Raquel epitomised the representation of Northern working-class women during the 1990s: "Raquel articulated the hopes of many young women in her position. The character was complex; one that the whole audience loved, she was naive, gentle, and although she looked as if she would break men's hearts, for the most part it was her own heart that was broken." Hobson deemed Raquel's breakdown at the registry office prior to her marriage to Curly "one of the most poignant and heartbreaking of any scene in a soap opera, or indeed in any other dramas." She felt that in sobbing with awareness that she was marrying not for love but security, Raquel "spoke of the young working-class women, bright, intelligent, who had been failed by the education system, thus united the shared cultural knowledge of the audience as she wept for herself and millions of other women like her."
, a scriptwriter who worked on 171 episodes of Coronation Street during the 1960s. She made her first Coronation Street appearance in 1987, shortly after graduating from drama school. Lancashire had a walk-on role as Wendy Farmer, a nurse who enquired about lodging with established character Jack Duckworth
(William Tarmey
). the actress then spent a year performing in West End theatre
, and worked as a drama lecturer in Salford before being cast as Raquel in 1991, initially on a three-month contract. She continued to teach for a year, before committing to Coronation Street full-time. Thompson believes that it was Raquel's role in the 1994 Tanya and Des love triangle
storyline which "elevated [her] to the pantheon of Street legend." Lancashire recalls it as a well-constructed storyline with credible pacing, explaining that "because Raquel lives in this very idealistic world – she's such a dreamer – when reality hits her, it hits very, very hard. That really was the first opportunity we'd had to strip away a bit of the exterior of her character and see how fragile she was."
Lancashire remained in the series until 1996, and was paid £90,000 annually. Two years into the role, she experienced a 14-month nervous breakdown
, but did not confide in anyone beside her close family, or take any time off work, which in retrospect she deemed "the worst thing [she] could have done." Lancashire departed in 1996 due to her heavy work schedule and desire to pursue other projects. She had grown tired of the fame the role brought her, shying away from personal appearances and interviews with television magazines, which made her feel "like an airhead". Although at the beginning of her tenure she agreed to some interviews, she later refused all publicity for Coronation Street, threatening to leave if she was made to do it.
Her departure was spread over three episodes, including an hour-long special, devised as part of the programme's "ratings war" with rival soap opera EastEnders
. Her final scenes attracted 20 million viewers. Lancashire briefly reprised the role in 2000, with series producer Jane Macnaught deeming Raquel one of Coronation Street most popular ever characters and her return an opportunity for her "millions of fans" to learn what had happened to her in the intervening years. Lancashire and Kennedy were the only cast members to appear in Raquel's return episode, marking the first time the programme had featured just two characters. It remained the only two-hander
episode of the soap for seven years, until a 2007 episode featured only mother and daughter Deirdre
(Anne Kirkbride
) and Tracy Barlow
(Kate Ford
).
(Pat Phoenix
) and Hilda Ogden
(Jean Alexander
), all "as brilliantly watchable as anything you might see at the National
".
In a 2010 feature examining Coronation Street matriarchs, Daily Mirror columnist Tony Stewart named Raquel his favourite, deeming her one of the programme's funniest characters. Considering the ten best soap opera Christmas moments, Guardian writer Daniel Martin included the 2004 Coronation Street episode in which Curly names a star after Raquel, praising it as an example of the producers not taking the "easy option" of a Christmas Day wedding. The Sunday Tribune
Diarmuid Doyle lauded the way Raquel overcame the blonde stereotype, "balancing her ditziness with real warmth and likeability and becoming one of the show's best-loved characters in the 1990s." Raquel had a celebrity fan in Cliff Richard
, who admitted in the 2000 documentary 40 Years on Coronation Street that he once dreamed of being cast in a walk-on role, rescuing Raquel from Curly and marrying her himself.
Raquel has become a notable facet of Lancashire's career. In 2001, The Guardian Gareth McLean
stated that while she has avoided being typecast
, Raquel "may be the role for which she is best known". Fellow Guardian writer Paul Flynn observed in 2004 that Lancashire is "assured her place in the national psyche" because of Raquel, and when Lancashire starred in the 2009 BBC
drama All the Small Things
, The Guardian Lucy Mangan noted that she is "still for many of us trailing clouds of the glorious Raquel Wolstenhulme". In 2011, Raquel's wedding to Curly was placed eighteenth in Channel 5's "Greatest TV Weddings" programme. Producer Spencer Campbell
thought the wedding was saddening, whilst critic Tina Baker
felt she and everyone watching knew it was doomed for the pair. Ian Hyland
opined that Raquel, Curly and Des' storyline was a "classic television love trinagle".
by Granada
in December 1995. The special was advertised as being exclusive to video, and 750,000 copies were sold, to the value of £10 million. The Independent Television Commission
received 70 complaints and investigated when Granada then broadcast the special on television on 24 March 1996. It received 16 million viewers, and prompted hundreds of complaints to Granada. A spokesman stated that that Granada had always intended to broadcast the special "once a suitable period had elapsed" following its release.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
from the British ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
soap opera Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...
, played by Sarah Lancashire
Sarah Lancashire
Sarah Lancashire is an English actress, probably best recognised for her role as Raquel Watts in Coronation Street. She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1986.-Television:...
.
Storylines
Raquel is established as the daughter of a strict CatholicCatholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
father and heavy-drinking mother, estranged from her father after partaking in semi-nude modelling. She is introduced as an assistant at Weatherfield
Weatherfield
Weatherfield is a fictional town, based on Salford in North West England, which serves as the setting for the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street...
's Bettabuys supermarket, working alongside Curly Watts (Kevin Kennedy
Kevin Kennedy (actor)
Kevin Kennedy is an English actor, writer, producer, singer, and guitarist, best known for playing the bottle-lensed Curly Watts in ITV's long running soap opera Coronation Street between 1983 and 2003.-Early life:Kennedy was born in Manchester. He attended St Paul's RC Secondary High School...
), with whom she begins a relationship. They separate when Raquel develops feelings for a photographer and moves to London to become a model. Disappointed by the calibre of work she is offered, Raquel returns to Weatherfield and becomes a barmaid at the Rovers Return Inn
Rovers Return Inn
The Rovers Return Inn is a fictional public house on the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street. The Rovers Return occupies the corner of Coronation Street and Rosamund Street. Since the first episode it has been the principal setting in the show and many of its most memorable moments...
. She moves in with local bookmaker Des Barnes
Des Barnes
Desmond Francis "Des" Barnes is a fictional character from the British soap opera Coronation Street, played by Philip Middlemiss.-Creation and development:...
(Philip Middlemiss
Philip Middlemiss
Philip Middlemiss is a British television and radio actor, who played bookmaker Des Barnes in ITV's Coronation Street...
) and they develop a sexual relationship, but he evicts her when his estranged wife Steph (Amelia Bullmore
Amelia Bullmore
Amelia Bullmore is an English actress and writer. She was born in London and studied drama at the University of Manchester. Bullmore started working as an actor but turned to writing in 1995...
) returns to him. Landlady Bet Gilroy (Julie Goodyear
Julie Goodyear
Julie Goodyear, MBE is an English television actress and media personality, best known for playing the long-running role of pub landlady Bet Lynch on British soap opera Coronation Street.-Biography:...
) allows Raquel to move into the Rovers. She dates Weatherfield County FC striker Wayne Farrell (Ray Polhill), but breaks up with him and pushes him into a canal when she discovers that he is cheating on her. Des and Raquel repair their relationship and move back in together, but break up once more when Des has an affair with Raquel's workmate Tanya Pooley (Eva Pope
Eva Pope
Eva Pope is an English actress. She trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.- Career :Her first major role was playing Tanya Pooley in ITV soap-opera Coronation Street from 1993 to 1994...
).
Raquel renews her friendship with Curly, who falls in love with her and proposes. Although Raquel accepts, at her engagement party she admits to Des that she loves him and not Curly, who she views as a best friend. She decides to break off the engagement. The following year, Curly's boss Leo Firman (John Elmes) attempts to rape Raquel. She is able to escape and tells Curly, who attacks Leo. Raquel gives evidence of sexual harassment against him, and Leo is fired. She and Curly grow closer in the aftermath. Though Raquel sleeps with Des again, he makes it clear that it was just a one-night-stand, and Raquel accepts that she will never mean as much to Des as he does to her. Later that day, Raquel proposes to Curly. They have a quick registry office wedding, and it is not until their honeymoon that Raquel admits what happened with Des. Curly forgives her, and their married life is initially happy. It does not last, however, and within a year Raquel leaves Curly to accept an aromatherapy job in Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur is the capital and the second largest city in Malaysia by population. The city proper, making up an area of , has a population of 1.4 million as of 2010. Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as the Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.2 million...
.
Four years later, Raquel visits Curly seeking a divorce. She reveals that she was pregnant when she left, and they now have a daughter, Alice Diana Watts. She tells Curly that she worked as a housekeeper in France following Alice's birth, where she fell in love with her employer, by whom she is now pregnant and wishes to marry. Curly agrees to a divorce, giving Raquel's new relationship his blessing.
Creation and characterisation
Raquel was created by Coronation Street writer John StevensonJohn Stevenson (writer)
John Stevenson is a British writer who since 1976 has been a regular script writer on Britain's longest running soap opera, Coronation Street. He was originally a newspaper journalist...
. His starting point was Bettabuys supermarket—a Northern "everyman" chain—and a conceptualisation of characters that might populate it. A Miss Bettabuy competition was suggested as a humorous storyline, with comedy derived from the contradiction between a beauty contest and the "prosaic and mundane" setting of Bettabuys. From this, the name Raquel Wolstenhulme was devised, contrasting the glamorous, Hollywood connotations of 'Raquel' with the down-to-earth Northern surname 'Wolstenhulme'. This glamorous/mundane contradiction was then encapsulated in the character.
Raquel filled the dizzy blonde
Dumb blonde
The blonde stereotype, the stereotypical perception of blond-haired women, has two aspects. On one hand, over the history, blonde hair in women has been considered attractive and desirable...
and tart with a heart stereotypes in Coronation Street. Her defining characteristics included her "short skirts, big hair and ... even bigger heart." Alongside her bouffant hair and short skirts, Raquel's costume commonly included high-heels and a great deal of make-up, reflecting her glamour model aspirations. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
Nancy Banks-Smith
Nancy Banks-Smith
Nancy Banks-Smith is a British television critic; she began writing for The Guardian in 1969. In 1970 she was recommended for the Order of the British Empire, which she declined.*1951- 1955: Northern Daily Telegraph, reporter...
described her as having an "almost saintly idiocy", and Dominic Maxwell of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
wrote that her "comic brio and emotional tenderness" made her a standout character. Ben Thompson of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
deemed her most affecting qualities to be her "hauteur, kindness and dignity in the face of defeat." AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
's Anne Richardson called Raquel "the very definition of loveable", writing: "Always trying to better herself, but without any social climbing snobbery, she longed for a better life whilst always seeming to be resigned to the fact that she'd never actually get there. Sweetly naive and tragically vulnerable, we longed for her to find her happy ending and our hearts broke every time hers did."
Lancashire initially had reservations about Raquel's characterisation, and believes that the writers were uncertain how to use her in early episodes. She found her two-dimensional, with an unappealing "acidic side" which could have resulted in Raquel becoming the "street bitch" had it been embellished. She took it upon herself to highlight Raquel's potential, playing against what had been written to make her more comic, evoking the sympathy of the audience. Thereafter, Raquel was often used for comedic purposes, though Lancashire attempted to keep her from becoming simply a figure of fun. During one storyline, she was taught French by Weatherfield teacher Ken Barlow
Ken Barlow
Kenneth "Ken" Barlow is a long-standing fictional character from the ITV soap opera Coronation Street, played by William Roache, and created by Tony Warren. He is currently the world's longest-serving soap opera character, having appeared continuously from the programme's inception in December...
(William Roache
William Roache
William Patrick Harry Roache MBE is a British actor, best known for his role as Ken Barlow in the soap opera Coronation Street...
), leading to what Richardson named one of the series' best comedy scenes:
The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
Deborah Ross feels that Lancashire bought "vulnerability and heartache and real tragedy and painful gullibility" to Raquel, citing the French lesson with Ken and the pride in Raquel's response as an example of her amusing but sad brilliance.
In her book Soap Opera, Dorothy Hobson suggests that Raquel epitomised the representation of Northern working-class women during the 1990s: "Raquel articulated the hopes of many young women in her position. The character was complex; one that the whole audience loved, she was naive, gentle, and although she looked as if she would break men's hearts, for the most part it was her own heart that was broken." Hobson deemed Raquel's breakdown at the registry office prior to her marriage to Curly "one of the most poignant and heartbreaking of any scene in a soap opera, or indeed in any other dramas." She felt that in sobbing with awareness that she was marrying not for love but security, Raquel "spoke of the young working-class women, bright, intelligent, who had been failed by the education system, thus united the shared cultural knowledge of the audience as she wept for herself and millions of other women like her."
Casting and development
Lancashire is the daughter of Geoffrey LancashireGeoffrey Lancashire
Geoffrey Lancashire was a British television scriptwriter. He is best remembered for writing television comedy series such as The Lovers and The Cuckoo Waltz.-Early life:...
, a scriptwriter who worked on 171 episodes of Coronation Street during the 1960s. She made her first Coronation Street appearance in 1987, shortly after graduating from drama school. Lancashire had a walk-on role as Wendy Farmer, a nurse who enquired about lodging with established character Jack Duckworth
Jack Duckworth
John Harold "Jack" Duckworth is a long-standing fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street, a long-running serial drama about working class life in the fictional town of Weatherfield. He is played by actor William Tarmey. The character debuted onscreen during the episode...
(William Tarmey
William Tarmey
Bill Tarmey is an English actor, singer and author, best known for playing Jack Duckworth on the soap opera Coronation Street. First appearing in the role in 1979, he played it continuously from 1983 to 2010.-Life and career:Tarmey was born in Ardwick, Manchester...
). the actress then spent a year performing in West End theatre
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
, and worked as a drama lecturer in Salford before being cast as Raquel in 1991, initially on a three-month contract. She continued to teach for a year, before committing to Coronation Street full-time. Thompson believes that it was Raquel's role in the 1994 Tanya and Des love triangle
Love triangle
A love triangle is usually a romantic relationship involving three people. While it can refer to two people independently romantically linked with a third, it usually implies that each of the three people has some kind of relationship to the other two...
storyline which "elevated [her] to the pantheon of Street legend." Lancashire recalls it as a well-constructed storyline with credible pacing, explaining that "because Raquel lives in this very idealistic world – she's such a dreamer – when reality hits her, it hits very, very hard. That really was the first opportunity we'd had to strip away a bit of the exterior of her character and see how fragile she was."
Lancashire remained in the series until 1996, and was paid £90,000 annually. Two years into the role, she experienced a 14-month nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
, but did not confide in anyone beside her close family, or take any time off work, which in retrospect she deemed "the worst thing [she] could have done." Lancashire departed in 1996 due to her heavy work schedule and desire to pursue other projects. She had grown tired of the fame the role brought her, shying away from personal appearances and interviews with television magazines, which made her feel "like an airhead". Although at the beginning of her tenure she agreed to some interviews, she later refused all publicity for Coronation Street, threatening to leave if she was made to do it.
Her departure was spread over three episodes, including an hour-long special, devised as part of the programme's "ratings war" with rival soap opera EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
. Her final scenes attracted 20 million viewers. Lancashire briefly reprised the role in 2000, with series producer Jane Macnaught deeming Raquel one of Coronation Street most popular ever characters and her return an opportunity for her "millions of fans" to learn what had happened to her in the intervening years. Lancashire and Kennedy were the only cast members to appear in Raquel's return episode, marking the first time the programme had featured just two characters. It remained the only two-hander
Two-hander
Two-hander is a term for a play, movie, or television programme with only two main characters. The two characters in question often display differences in social standing or experiences, differences that are explored and possibly overcome as the story unfolds....
episode of the soap for seven years, until a 2007 episode featured only mother and daughter Deirdre
Deirdre Barlow
Deirdre Anne Barlow is a long-standing fictional character in the UK television ITV Granada soap opera, Coronation Street...
(Anne Kirkbride
Anne Kirkbride
Anne Kirkbride is an English actress, best known for her long-running role as Deirdre Barlow in Coronation Street which she has played for thirty-nine years.-Coronation Street:...
) and Tracy Barlow
Tracy Barlow
Tracy Lynette Barlow is a fictional character in the British television soap opera Coronation Street. She is currently portrayed, since 2002, by Kate Ford, the latest in a series of actresses who have played Tracy at various ages...
(Kate Ford
Kate Ford
Kate Connerty is a British actress best known for playing the role of Tracy Barlow in the long-running ITV soap opera Coronation Street from 2002 to 2007. Kate returned to Coronation Street on Christmas Eve 2010....
).
Reception
Raquel was well-received by critics, deemed by Banks-Smith to be "the jewel in the Rovers' crown". She called Lancashire "one of the bright particular stars of Coronation Street", writing that Raquel, "as is the strange way of stars, shines bright long after the star itself has gone." Reviewing the two-hander episode between Raquel and Curly, Banks-Smith called it "profoundly melancholic", describing Raquel as, "the barmaid every man dreamed would serve him, leaning like the blessed damozel from the gold bar of heaven, backed by shining spirits in bottles. A barmaid in excelsis. Beautiful as a daffodil though not as bright. A fine comic creation but entirely without a sense of humour." Ross, a long-standing fan of Coronation Street, classes Raquel as one of the programme's greatest characters, alongside Elsie TannerElsie Tanner
Elsie Tanner is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street, played by Patricia Phoenix from 1960 to 1973 and from 1976 until 1984. Elsie Tanner was one of the original core characters on Coronation Street and appeared in the very first episode...
(Pat Phoenix
Pat Phoenix
Patricia "Pat" Frederica Phoenix was an English actress who became one of the first sex symbols of British television through her role of Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street.-Early life and career:Born in Ireland to Anna Maria Josephine Noonan and Tom Manfield, but moved to Manchester before...
) and Hilda Ogden
Hilda Ogden
Hilda Alice Ogden is a fictional character from the television series Coronation Street, one of the best-known of all the regular characters in the soap opera, whose name became synonymous with a certain type of working-class woman...
(Jean Alexander
Jean Alexander
Jean Alexander is a BAFTA Nominated English television actress. She is best known to British television viewers as Hilda Ogden on the soap opera Coronation Street, a role she played from 1964–1987 and also as Auntie Wainwright on the longest running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine from 1988 to 2010...
), all "as brilliantly watchable as anything you might see at the National
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
".
In a 2010 feature examining Coronation Street matriarchs, Daily Mirror columnist Tony Stewart named Raquel his favourite, deeming her one of the programme's funniest characters. Considering the ten best soap opera Christmas moments, Guardian writer Daniel Martin included the 2004 Coronation Street episode in which Curly names a star after Raquel, praising it as an example of the producers not taking the "easy option" of a Christmas Day wedding. The Sunday Tribune
Sunday Tribune
The Sunday Tribune was an Irish Sunday broadsheet newspaper published by Tribune Newspapers plc. It was edited in its final years by Nóirín Hegarty, who changed both the tone and the physical format of the newspaper from broadsheet to tabloid. Former editors include Conor Brady, Vincent Browne,...
Diarmuid Doyle lauded the way Raquel overcame the blonde stereotype, "balancing her ditziness with real warmth and likeability and becoming one of the show's best-loved characters in the 1990s." Raquel had a celebrity fan in Cliff Richard
Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....
, who admitted in the 2000 documentary 40 Years on Coronation Street that he once dreamed of being cast in a walk-on role, rescuing Raquel from Curly and marrying her himself.
Raquel has become a notable facet of Lancashire's career. In 2001, The Guardian Gareth McLean
Gareth McLean
Gareth McLean is a Scottish journalist who writes for The Guardian newspaper and on Soap operas for the Radio Times magazine.McLean graduated with an MA in English from the University of Aberdeen, working at The Scotsman newspaper as a Feature Writer from 1997 until he began writing as a TV Critic...
stated that while she has avoided being typecast
Typecasting (acting)
In TV, film, and theatre, typecasting is the process by which a particular actor becomes strongly identified with a specific character; one or more particular roles; or, characters having the same traits or coming from the same social or ethnic groups...
, Raquel "may be the role for which she is best known". Fellow Guardian writer Paul Flynn observed in 2004 that Lancashire is "assured her place in the national psyche" because of Raquel, and when Lancashire starred in the 2009 BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
drama All the Small Things
All the Small Things (TV series)
All the Small Things is a British television programme, produced by the BBC and created and developed by Debbie Horsfield. Following the lives and ambitions of a church choir and its members, the programme began airing on 31 March 2009 and ran for six episodes. The programme frequently features...
, The Guardian Lucy Mangan noted that she is "still for many of us trailing clouds of the glorious Raquel Wolstenhulme". In 2011, Raquel's wedding to Curly was placed eighteenth in Channel 5's "Greatest TV Weddings" programme. Producer Spencer Campbell
Spencer Campbell
Spencer Campbell is an English television producer.- Career :Campbell's early credits include working as a researcher in the early 1980s on the Granada Television television magazine Chalkface...
thought the wedding was saddening, whilst critic Tina Baker
Tina Baker
Tina Baker is a broadcaster and journalist and a leading British soap opera and TV critic. She has featured on many TV programmes such as, Coronation Street Secrets, The Good Soap Guide, How Soaps Changed the World, Big Brother's Big Mouth, and The Top 100 TV Christmas Crackers...
felt she and everyone watching knew it was doomed for the pair. Ian Hyland
Ian Hyland
Ian Hyland is an English television critic.-Journalism career:Hyland wrote a column for the Sunday Mirror from 2000 to 2005. Until 2011 closure of the newspaper, he wrote for the News of the World. He currently writes for the Daily Mail...
opined that Raquel, Curly and Des' storyline was a "classic television love trinagle".
In other media
Raquel and Curly are the central characters of Coronation Street – The Cruise, a 75 minute special following their honeymoon, which was released on VHSVHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
by Granada
Granada Productions
Granada Productions was a British commercial television production and distribution company. The company took its name from the successful ITV franchise, Granada Television....
in December 1995. The special was advertised as being exclusive to video, and 750,000 copies were sold, to the value of £10 million. The Independent Television Commission
Independent Television Commission
The Independent Television Commission licensed and regulated commercial television services in the United Kingdom between 1 January 1991 and 28 December 2003....
received 70 complaints and investigated when Granada then broadcast the special on television on 24 March 1996. It received 16 million viewers, and prompted hundreds of complaints to Granada. A spokesman stated that that Granada had always intended to broadcast the special "once a suitable period had elapsed" following its release.