Coronation Street – is the soap going down the drain?
IKNOW Coronation Street is a soap but I think it’s going down the drain and I would like them to pull the plug on their obsession with violent, extreme and overlong storylines. Once upon a time, Corrie was a wry, gritty, humorous look at life in a cobbled back-to-back street.
Now, we have more psychos, murderers, fraudsters, ex-jailbirds and utterly stupid people than you’d ever meet in an entire city, never mind one road. Has Quentin Tarantino taken over as director?
Take the character of Pat Phelan. Please, please take him. We’ve all had enough!
Phelan’s thousand-yard stare locks on to anyone he passes. He’s either lurking on street corners, or issuing threats, in classic, pantomime bully mode. He’s a murderer and the violence is often explicit. After he killed for the third time 662 viewers complained.
I say all this more in sorrow than in anger because I love Coronation Street and want to enjoy it but I’m turning into Victor Meldrew as I shout at the screen “I don’t believe it!” at least three times an episode.
It’s the world’s longest-running TV soap. Over the years, leading writers such as Jack Rosenthal, Jimmy McGovern and Russell T Davies (Doctor Who) have contributed episodes and storylines and acting knights Ian McKellen and Ben Kingsley have been among the stampede of big names proud to be part of it. It’s launched the careers of many current stars including Sarah Lancashire, Michelle Keegan and Suranne Jones.
Yes, it’s a drama and not real life but the first rule of drama is that you have to believe in the characters. Otherwise it’s fantasy – and currently Corrie is not so much a bubbly soap as a bucket of cold water – shocking and annoying.
It has a wonderful writing team but they are guided by the storyliners, who decide what happens months ahead, to keep us hooked.
When Coronation Street started, “boxed sets” meant presentation packs of Old Spice aftershave with soap, or matching gloves and a scarf. Now, in many ways, The Street is a victim of boxed set syndrome.
THE multiple-series dramas, such as Homeland and Game Of Thrones, have become huge hits and their makers know that once a drama becomes popular, the commercial pressure is on to keep the plots dragging on for whole series.
Film-makers, however, know you can wrap up a good story in a couple of hours. Look at Casablanca. There was no need for Casablanca – The Series.
The writers on Coronation Street have scripted truly magnificent stories over the years – most memorably for Roy (David Neilson) and transgender Hayley (Julie Hesmondhalgh, whose love for each other endured until, suffering from cancer, she killed herself in 2014.
That was a golden period for Coronation Street. It proved you can have gripping storylines about good people, where nobody gets punched, or sets fire to the factory.
Yet there is a view – a strong one – that soaps, with their huge viewership, are perfectly placed to bring up storylines which address serious, real-life crises.
But they don’t have to do it all the time, do they? We’ve had an endless and very harrowing tale of Bethany’s teenage grooming abuse. Admirable. But no sooner has she been rescued from that than she’s working in a lap-dancing club.
Currently, there’s bipolar Gina, Robert’s gambling, Toyah’s desperation to have a baby – poor Toyah, what a one-note role for her – Eva’s unwanted pregnancy, Billy’s guilt at killing Ken Barlow’s wife in a car crash decades ago.
And at the end of most episodes a call-centre voice instructs us: “If you’ve been affected by any of the issues, go to the website…”
I struggled but I couldn’t remember being chained up by a psychotic builder in a basement and force-fed Pot Noodles.
Traditionally, soaps have feckless male characters and strong females but I’m appalled that the workshy laziness of Jack Duckworth, Eddie Windass and Stan Ogden has been replaced by secretive malevolence.
And where are the strong women? The balcony-chested, brassy barmaids, such as those once portrayed by Julie Goodyear, Sarah Lancashire and Beverley Callard have become fey and troubled Eva, Sarah and Toyah.
Thank goodness there’s still a Cruella de Vil in the Street. Tracy Barlow (a convicted murderer), has the best lines. She marched up to age-gap lovers Carla and Daniel in the Rovers last week: “I hear you’ve GOLDEN DAYS: Roy and Hayley, and Sarah Lancashire as barmaid Raquel cougared my brother.” More of that please. That’s Corrie at its best. Snappy, funny exchanges instead of fear and loathing.
But when did Pat Phelan’s wife Eileen – originally, one of the Street’s shrewdest, smartest characters – take a stupid pill?
If my husband said, in the middle of the evening, he had to go out for a “bit of business”, I’d jolly well want to know where and with whom. Can’t she see that she’s married to a mass murderer? All the signs are there – the doomy house with a basement he won’t let her see; the number of people who hate him (the entire street); the missing (dead) people connected to him – Michael, Andy, Luke, Vinny?
As Dexy’s Midnight Runners memorably sang: “Come On, Eileen!” Even Sue Cleaver, who plays Eileen Phelan, recently admitted that the heavy plotlines are taking their toll. “It’s all getting very dark. It’s just too complicated at the moment.”
Amazingly, the programme makers seem to have reacted to the criticism by viewers and actors of the depressing storylines (which recently included everything from child grooming to kidnap and murder). They’re encouraging the stars to share ideas and participate in shaping their character’s fate.
Jane Danson (Leanne Battersby), said: “We can put our creative points of view across now. So, rather than be miserable, we get a little
These days Corrie is completely unbelievable and long-winded, full of murderers and people with issues, complains JAN ETHERINGTON
bit of the old characters back.” Hallelujah! But it’s also a ploy to stop their stars walking out.
Actress Catherine Tyldesley (Eva Price) is off this summer, while Shayne Ward (Aidan Conor) is also expected to go soon. Debbie Rush has “left”, as her character Anna is in prison for five years. Malcolm Hebden (the pernickety Norris Cole) is on a health-related “extended break”, while Helen Flanagan (who plays Rosie Webster) is leaving to have a baby.
BUT back to Pat Phelan. Spoiler alert! Photos seem to show he and Eileen setting out in a boat in Cumbria. Will he drown? Not very original. Didn’t Joe McIntyre, one of Gail’s many deranged husbands, try to fake his own death in a boating accident there? The Cumbrian Tourist Board should start a “This is where soap actors come to die” tour.
Some choose exits and some have exits thrust upon them. Lately there has been a rash of departures linked to accusations of “inappropriate behaviour”. There are three ways to leave the Street: be murdered, leave in a taxi gazing back out of a rain-lashed window like Mrs Thatcher quitting number 10, or “go to Portugal”.
For my money, aggressively quiffed males Adam Barlow and Zeedan Nazir who let their hair do the talking, restricting their own contribution to heaving sighs and moody dissent, should be the next to get the first plane out.
Maybe the writers could go to Portugal too? A bit of sunshine might cheer them up and inspire some more light-hearted stories. Because, for heaven’s sake, it’s a soap, not an acid bath.