Are gays killing Coronation Street?

[sp1814]

It's been a quiet day on the Muslim front, so perhaps it's time to stir up a little anti-gay sentiments?

http://www.dailymail....s-gay-characters.html

Now...as far as I'm aware, Eastenders, Emmerdale and even The Archers feature prominent stories with gay characters and yet their ratings don't seem affected (even when the Daily Mail printed a made-up story about viewers' outrage at 'man-on-man' bedroom scene last month.

So what IS it with certain right wing papers?

[cupid04]

If I say yes, does that make me homophobic?

[sandyRoe]

Those papers need to feed the prejudices of their readers.

[andy-hughes]

I no longer watch Corrie, but the complaints surround the issue of storylines moving too far away from the original remit - life in a northern street. I think the addition of gay characters is not an issue in itself, more an indication of an apparent wish to 'modernise' the soap, which is not going down well with its core audience.

[redman41]

Don't watch the Soaps at all as my Brain cannot cope. Would not bother me if they were all Gay !

[Bobbisox]

I think people are looking back at Tony Warren who himself was gay but always wrote about life in a small terraced street in Lancashire and tried to make it as real as possible whereas this producer seems to be overloading the Street with a lot of Gay people, considering it is a very small street, it looks a bit top heavy...ermmm and I am not homophobic either btw!

[pa___ul3]

they should write a soap called "realistic street" where everyone just sits in watching telly and the local pub's boarded up.
Soaps are meant to be far fetched and evocative!

[sandyRoe]

Wouldn't just be the local pub boarded up. Would streets like Coronation not have been demolished years ago?

[andy-hughes]

Tony Warren still is gay - he is very much alive.

The only point in which his sexuality is relavent here is his ear for dialogue which he picked up as a child playing under the table while his mum and her neighbours gossiped. From that experience came the 'strong' women that made Corrie such groundbreaking TV in the sixties.

[Bobbisox]

they did Paul, and called it the Royale Family

[Bobbisox]

sorry Andy didn't mean to use past tense

[Ankou]

perhaps most of the corrie viewing public have only met one or two gays in their life, so having several down one street is probably pushing the boundaries of believability a little too far ?

however, given the popularity of peoplelike dale winton, julian cleary, alan carr, graham norton, lily savage etc etc amongst a certain demographic, its likely that such women are the core viewers of corrie as well.

mrs kou doesn't watch corrie, but she loves watching a camp man like alan carr doin his thang.

[Safiya]

I agree with Redman's 2nd sentence.

[sp1814]

Well, according to the report, there are a gay couple, a transexual (which doesn't count as 'gay') and a lesbian schoolgirl.

So three characters out of a regular revolving cast of sixty. That's about 8%.

Also, I don't see how Corrie would survive if it were exactly the same programme that Tony Warren devised in the 60s...in some kind of time warp!

[Mamyalynne]

I live in a gritty North West town not far from the fictional 'Weatherfield', we still have some terraced streets that could pass for 'Corrie'. I live in a block of nine flats and two of my neighbours are gay, I don't find the number of gays in the programme to be over the top.

[sp1814]

Ankou

I think the words 'believability' and 'soap opera' should be kept as far away from each other as possible.

When Brookside was at it's height, there had been seven murders, a body under a patio, an armed siege, an outbreak of a deadly bug...etc etc etc.

[Ankou]

well thats liverpool for you

[Sqad]

I don't watch Coronation Street............but this comes from Mrs sqad.

She feels that as life, the real world has moved on and this is reflected in the stories of Coronation Street and of the characters. She rather enjoys Corrie and gays are just part of it, but there again, she ALWAYS got on well with gays.......even a couple of medical colleagues who were gay.

Me?.............I don't care anymore...........just bring them on.

[Bobbisox]

hi sqad, I was referring to a Newspaper article which talked about Tony Warren and this current producer, not my words,

[rov1100]

Maybe in Ena Sharples time they would not have been called Gays but queers. The language somehow seems to offer some acceptance.