Coronation Street is flirting with a full fan mutiny: one-man crime wave Pat Phelan has escaped justice again and entered his third year of blackmailing, shooting, kidnapping and embezzling. It’s not the first time soaps have taken a risk with plotlines that went too far, went on for far too long – or both.
EastEnders’ mystery bit on the side
Sex’s answer to “Who shot Phil?” took up months of EastEnders in 2012: who was enjoying closet coitus with Kat? Theories abounded as she heaved lubricious glances at every Albert Square male. Aeons after everyone got bored, cigar-sucking wrong’un Derek Branning was revealed to be the lucky guy. By way of apology, the show killed him off days later.
Brookside’s incestuous siblings
Brookie loved to smash taboos, but some are more breakable than others. A lesbian kiss in 1995: hurrah! A 1996 plot with a brother and sister at it: whoa there. The suspiciously posh Simpson clan – insisting on red wine with lamb and so on – were indeed different, in that their grownup kids Nat and Georgia were rejecting sex with scousers and keeping it in the family. After months of viewers barfing angrily, N&G left Liverpool … together.
Emmerdale’s ill-timed plane crash
It is a double NTA-winning soap heavyweight now, but in 1993 Emmerdale was quaint and slow compared to the competition. The solution: set fire to everything. A plane crashed into the village, turning all the dullest characters to ash. Job done. Plenty of viewers felt, however, that airing the landmark episode a week after the five-year anniversary of its clear inspiration, the Lockerbie disaster, was a stunt too far.
EastEnders’ baby swap
A proper, serious outrage, with complaints to Ofcom and a panicked, conciliatory statement from BBC director general Mark Thompson, followed the New Year 2011 episodes in which Ronnie Branning discovered her newborn son had died. The story of her stealing fellow new mum Kat’s child was meant to run all year, but overwhelming criticism from charities and campaigners prompted producers to resolve it months early.
Coronation Street’s fraud conviction
Soaps used to be able to hit a sweet spot where the controversy was immense, but nobody really got hurt. So it was in 1998 when all-time Corrie great Deirdre Rachid was jailed after falling for a fraudster. “Free the Weatherfield One” T-shirts were printed and phone lines were jammed for weeks. But with no rape or murder involved, everything was put right again before long, and Deirdre’s brief prison interlude turned out to be fun. More innocent times.
