With thanks to this week's Inside Soap magazine we're bringing you some Coronation Street spoilers for next week's Corrie.
Yasmeen's picked up by the cops next week after she rings 999 and tells them she thinks she's killed Geoff in her frenzied attack - which we'll see this coming Friday night.
But now that Alya is joining forces with Sally (read more on that here) does this mean that there's a light at the end of the tunnel for Yasmeen and even if her case goes to court, she might be freed, finally?
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Glenda Young
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15 comments:
In one way, it's a shame Corrie went this route with Yasmeen. I would have preferred her to deal with Geoff herself by being strong and walking away. However, that route may not have helped other women who, far from being inspired by Yasmeen's strength, would have felt unable to do the same and ended up feeling worse. Yasmeen lives on a street where she is surrounded by family and friends. If they had realised the truth earlier, a fair criticism would be that it was unrealistic. The pity of Yasmeen (possibly) being wrongly imprisoned is that Corrie has done this many times before.
Nope, she'll get found guilty and sentenced to like 10-20 years for attempted murder, will spend like 4-5 months in fail before being exonerated. They do this same exact storyline every couple of years.
Another woman wrongly imprisoned - how many is that now?
Jeanie (anon): One of the problems with this turn of events is that once again Corrie, while claiming to want to educate people about an issue and encourage victims to speak out, shows the victim being penalized for taking action. So, it's not exactly going to motivate others to free themselves--just make them realize how the system never listens.
I might be wrong but by my reckoning Yasmeen will be the fourth woman to have been wrongly imprisoned in Corrie, the others being Deirdre Barlow (at that time Rashid), Anna Windass and Sally Metcalfe. Maria and Izzy have also been imprisoned but I think they actually committed the offences of which they were convicted. And of course Tracy Barlow was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder but was released on a technicality.
I stopped watching Corrie two years ago as I found the storyline of the exploitation of Anna Windass by Pat Phelan distasteful. I have recently been giving the show another try. The exploitation of Yasmeen by the odious Geoff (probably just as odious as Pat Phelan) is probably fairly realistic as many women will have had similar ordeals with controlling and abusive partners. However, I think that on the whole it is a pity another innocent woman is apparently going to have to suffer the ordeal of wrongful imprisonment before she is exonerated. I think that I too would have preferred the writers to have taken a different approach this time and given Yasmeen the courage to leave Geoff.
It does also seemed me that Corrie has over-used the scenario of characters being sent to prison in recent years. Peter Barlow was also jailed for a crime he did not commit a few years ago, and if I remember correctly the convictions of Maria, Izzy, Anna and Sally occurred in fairly quick succession in the following years.
I do not quite understand why more female characters are sent to prison in Corrie than male characters. I do remember that Steve McDonald was imprisoned a good twenty or so years ago either before or after Deirdre, and of course his father was also jailed but I think has now been released? Another female character I remember being imprisoned was Angela Harris who concealed the fact that her daughter Katy had murdered her father. Katy committed suicide before she could be arrested.
During the first 25 years or so of Corrie, which I would probably consider its golden era, I think the only characters who were imprisoned were Ken Barlow in 1967 when he opted to spend a week in Strangeways as a matter of principle rather than pay a fine for taking part in an anti-Vietnam demonstration, and Eddie Yeats in the early 1970s whom I think was sent back to Walton Jail after his initial stint on the show before returning as a regular charcter on his release some months later.
Going to prison seems the default storyline on Corrie. There must be more people on that street that have been to prison than those who haven’t.
A long time ago, in one of my Five Things, I made a joke that Yasmeen was horrified to learn both her neighbours (Sally and Gail) had served time in prison for crimes they hadn't committed. Little did I know she'd be joining them one day and all three of the posh houses would be filled with ex-cons.
Turning what was supposed to be a serious abuse storyline into another cookie-cutter wrongfully accused plot is disgaceful.
Also, how stupid are the police in that they're going to do a "thorough search" of the house and yet fail to find even a single camera? This is as bad as the CCTVs all around the street that failed to work except when they benefited Phelan, just to drag the story out as much as possible. Then again, the Weatherfield police are the most inept pieces of **** I've ever seen in fiction so that's to be expected.
I am extremely disappointed that we are going to have another female character go to jail. What kind of message is that sending to real victims? There is no way except to try and kill him? Shameful.
I would be inclined to agree that going to prison seems to have become the default storyline in Corrie in recent years. I had forgotten that Gail has also been wrongly imprisoned.
As has already been suggested, Yasmeen will probably have to spend several weeks or even months behind bars so as to draw the story out before her innocence is proved. As filming on Corrie has been suspended due to the Coronavirus I don't even know if all of her storyline has been filmed. If recorded episodes run out before filming is eventually allowed to start again it might be even longer before we find out if Yasmeen is eventually proved innocent.
I hope this story finishes soon so I can tune in again. I've been watching Corrie for over 40 years and this is the first time a storyline has caused me to stop watching the show. Geoff produces such a visceral reaction of disgust in me that I can't bear to even see his face. I understand that the writers/producers are trying to bring attention to the very real-life problem of emotional abuse, but the storyline has gone on too long. With everything else so negative in the world right now, the show is just not good for my own mental health.
In its heyday Corrie was renowned for its portrayal of the humour found in day-to-day life. This is very scarce now when most storylines seem to be about doom and gloom. We no longer get anything like Hilda thwarting the latest dodgy scheme thought up by Stan and Eddie, or Bet gossiping behind the bar about nothing in particular with Alf, Ken and Len, or Ena and Minnie (and in the early days Martha) moralising in the snug while downing milk stout. This was what made Corrie so appealing. In those days the regular charcters seemed like friends as we felt we knew them so well. The world is a very different place now and Corrie will never have the likes of Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell, Martha Longhurst, Albert Tatlock, Elsie Tanner, Hilda Ogden, Annie Walker and Bet Lynch again. They all belonged to a more innocent and lighthearted time in the show's history.
So true, Antiphon. but even though the world is a different place, aren't most of us at heart relatively nice, fun-loving and even funny and sometimes heroic people? Are we all a bunch of criminal, damaged misery-guts? Surely that can be reflected more on Corrie?
It's a shame that everything is so very predictable. I could write these storylines in my sleep. I love Nina and Roy, more scenes with them please.
Corrie need to stop with these miscarriage of justice storylines. It's boring, grating and it doesn't put the justice system in good light.
I can't fault the actors but coercive control is not something that can be portrayed well in sensationalist soapland. They've dragged the storyline too long. I wish Yasmeen called his bluff or caught Geoff out.
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