William Roache defends Corrie and Phil Collinson

{jcomments on}William Roache has defended Coronation Street and its producer, Phil Collinson, who has come under fire from the press in recent weeks.

The tabloids, over the past few weeks, have portrayed Coronation Street as a soap in crisis with tales of declining ratings, unhappy cast members, criticisms over the amount of LGBT characters and the casting of Michelle Collins. Producer Phil Collinson has appeared on Breakfast and This Morning, and has also written on the official website for the soap, to defend Corrie, its ratings performance and the number of LGBT characters within the cast – as well as Michelle Collins’ much mangled northern accent. Now original cast member William Roache has leapt to the soaps defence.

“One of the hardest tasks of the producer is to move the Street forward into what is socially acceptable…..The producer has to do that by bringing in the new, without offending the old. So every so often, a senior member, well-meaning , will say that the Street isn’t what it used to be. It’s sad that that happens, but it does. There was a big article like that last week. [Brian Sewell’s article in the Daily Mail, see more here >>]

A journalist jumped in on this bandwagon and what he did was, he took the current ratings – which are about 8 million roughly – compared it to a one-off special which went out, highly publicised at 9pm and got 10 million, and said that the Street is slipping in the ratings. If you look at the ratings for this time last year, we are 8% up. Far from going down, the Street is going up. Now, a lot of this is due to the live episode and the tram crash, which brought in a lot of new viewers and many have stayed with us. We’re stronger than ever, better than ever”. – William Roach on This Morning

However, fans of the soap are now making their voices heard – criticising ‘long, tedious’ storylines such as the John Stape saga. You can read some what some fans think about the state of Coronation Street here >>