My Meerkat Hell

Aw, the Meerkats!  Everyone loves the Meerkats, right?  They're so cute, with their strange Russian accents and quizzical faces and little smoking jackets.  Adorbs!

NO.  These little break bumpers have been creeping me out for some time, and it's just getting worse.

At first it was sweet - the meerkat characters wandering round Coronation Street, poking their heads in the Kabin, reading the menu at the Bistro.  Then I began to wonder: where were all the people?  Where were all the residents?

A completely empty Rovers, for example.  When has that ever happened?  Even when they had no electricity a few months ago, the bar was still rammed with residents trying to stop Rita from finding an excuse to sing.  There is no-one in that pub, not even Stella offering to help Vassily with his darts because it turns out she's an expert on that as well.

The truth is obvious.

These supposedly "humorous" vignettes are actually set in a post-apocalyptic Weatherfield.  This is Manchester after all the humans have been consumed by ravenous Meerkats hell-bent on global domination.

I mean, look.  Would Gail McIntyre really let a filthy rodent into her home?  One she wasn't related to, anyway?  She's far too houseproud to let that happen.  And she definitely wouldn't let an animal finger her biscuit barrel; Gail's Rich Teas are strictly monitored.  She counts them in and counts them out, and God help you if you try to sneak one in before your tea.  But there is a meerkat, bold as brass, dunking her biscuits in her china.

The only explanation for how this occurred is that Gail is somehow... indisposed.  What horrible fate have the residents been condemned to?

Oh, the horror.

Each of these supposedly "sweet" films actually show our new Meerkat overlords larking about in the homes and businesses of their slaughtered victims.  It's a bit like Planet of the Apes, but replacing Charlton Heston with Norris Cole.

Bless Eccles for still trying to protect his owners, chasing the Meerkats round the Street.  He's still wearing his lead, which implies that Aleksander dealt with Dierdre only moments before this was filmed; I suspect that if you poked your head round the ginnel you'd find her half-eaten corpse, a cigarette dangling from her mauled face.

In short, these videos are an insight into a hell that none of us want to see; a future where Coronation Street is a wasteland populated by sadistic, violent beasts.  ITV's persistence in showing them in the middle of wholesome family entertainment is sick, sick, sick, and I for one will be fast forwarding through them as quickly as possible until sanity is restored.  It almost makes me hanker for the return of those two sofa women and their weird sub-dom relationship with that man ("Fetch us food, while we luxuriate on this three seater!").

Shudder.


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