The legend that is Michael Parkinson has weighed in with this thoughts on the Pat Phelan storyline in Coronation Street.
It is a storyline that not only attracted 390 complaints to Ofcom but also really distressed me as editor of the Coronation Street Blog.
This was for two reasons.
The first is that I agree - in part - with Michael Parkinson and all those people who complained to Ofcom. There was no light to balance this very dark storyline, no humour to balance things out in the way that Corrie can do so wonderfully when needed. It was fantastic drama and I can't fault the acting or the storyline. It was brilliant stuff. But it was not Corrie as we know and love it.
And the second reason is that I was swamped by emails, direct messages on Twitter and private messages on Facebook from angry fans who were as upset as I was about what had happened in those double episodes. But in their anger they failed to remember that we are a fan site. The messages that came to me - yes, me, sitting here in my slippers and curlers with my small glass of milk stout - were meant for ITV. Fans hadn't stopped to consider who they were sending their complaints to. They found a website, they found an email address and they let rip in no uncertain terms. Vitriol was unleashed. Sadly, it all came to me.
Every single complaint I received I replied to, telling each person that we were just a fan site, that the storyline wasn't our fault, that I personally was not to blame. But you just try telling that, again and again - over the course of a whole weekend - when you feel fans' fury yourself and can empathise with it. It was a very difficult weekend indeed. I started viewing my email from behind a cushion behind the sofa, almost a quivering wreck (and I'm not joking here). I advised all those who wrote to me to email ITV and I do hope that at least some of them did. I had to put out an appeal on our Facebook page, twice, to ask fans to write to ITV, not to us as a fan site via private message on facebook. If anyone has a complaint about a television programme, whatever it is, please contact the programme and its makers directly. As a fan site, there is nothing we can do apart from forward on your complaint, and only then if it comes in via email.
In the ten years of the Coronation Street Blog (we turn 10 next month!) I've never experienced anything like the amount of anger directed at the show. that weekend. And sadly, as I've said, it was sent to the wrong people. We are fans writing a fan site which clearly has the words 'fan site' on it both here and at www.corrie.net. And now that I've finally got that out in public, let's move on.
In an interview with Radio Times this week, veteran broadcaster Parky says that violent Coronation Street makes him recoil.
“I am affronted by what I see as a gem like Coronation Street in danger of becoming just another formulaic soap"
“I never imagined I would recoil from watching Coronation Street, but the storyline of the kidnapping and torture of Andy and Vinny and their brutal murder by Pat Phelan had little to do with that gentle, funny reminder of life in the North Country I discovered and so admired in the early 1960s when I joined Granada Television.
“In those days, Ena, Minnie and Martha dominated the snug, Elsie Tanner was everyone’s idea of the good-time girl with a heart of gold and, later, Hilda Ogden made three pot ducks flying up a wall a fashion statement.”
Parkinson, who in 1979 was one of the founders of the British League for Hilda Ogden in tribute to Jean Alexander’s iconic character, said the Pat Phelan storyline was “more suited to a horror channel than a family show”.
“The storyline is made even more shocking by Connor McIntyre’s performance as Phelan,” added Parkinson who founded the society alongside Sir Laurence Olivier, Russell Harty and Sir John Betjeman.
“His basilisk stare, the unnerving certainty of his murderous intent, is enough evidence of his ability to play a psychopath and worthy of a series about this murderous nutter – hopefully, far away from Coronation Street.
“I am affronted by what I see as a gem like Coronation Street in danger of becoming just another formulaic soap.”
Read more Corrie news, interviews, gossip and spoilers
Follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook
Please read our advice for leaving comments on the Coronation Street Blog
All original work on Coronation Street Blog is covered by a Creative Commons License
