Daily Inspiration Quote by Michael Parkinson

Parkinson isn’t praising a TV show so much as naming a national habit: the way a long-running soap can become a domestic utility, as ordinary and oddly necessary as the kettle. “Unthinkable” is deliberately over the top, but it’s not empty hyperbole. It signals how Coronation Street functions in Britain less as entertainment than as routine - a shared calendar, a common reference point, a low-stakes civic space that keeps showing up even when everything else changes.

The subtext is about belonging. By shifting from “I think” to “our lives,” Parkinson moves from personal taste to collective identity, quietly granting the program the status of cultural infrastructure. That’s classic Parkinson: genial authority delivered like a chat, with the confidence of someone who spent decades translating public life into living-room conversation. He’s also defending a certain idea of popular culture - not as guilty pleasure, but as social glue.

Context matters. Parkinson came of age in an era when three channels could still create a mass audience; Coronation Street was one of the few institutions that could cut across class, region, and politics while still sounding distinctly local. His line carries a hint of elegy for that older broadcast Britain, where the nation watched together and argued together the next day. It’s a sentimental claim, yes, but also a shrewd one: the “unthinkable” isn’t losing a show, it’s losing the shared frame it provided.