But a lot of the blame lies with Corrie themselves. Even without these doubles, they don't see to be able to find a balance any longer, allowing one or two stories to dominate pushing other characters to the sidelines for weeks and even months on end. The cast is far too large with superfluous characters. The storylines are dull. The writing unimaginative. The execution uninventive. There's no longer that creative spark. It just seems to be a machine churning out the same old tosh.
Totally agree. Either one or both of the double episodes must go, and there needs to be a serious cull of pointless characters.
And the characters they have got need to be better used - for example Jamie and Violet with this storyline with the baby. It's really all been told from Sean's perspective, and next week they get their big exit storyline which really is the first storyline they've had for months.
The whole baby thing, which actually had the potential to rescue the awful initial plot, has basically been stuck in the background and barely popped to the surface - while other storylines like Maria/Liam/Carla and the Ryan/Alex farce have been prominent for far too long.
I've no objection to long running storylines and indeed hate it when a major storyline is rushed to an unrealistic conclusion - but the viewers need time of from them and it's a storyline that could have been put to the back of the show for a couple of weeks and then bought back to the centre of the show.
For example the arrival of Alex has come straight off the back of Ryan himself finding out - really that could have been given a few weeks, let the storyline play in the background for a month or so, and then bring in the storyline of Alex running away and wanting to move in with them.
Corrie really need to learn from the other soaps over how to use five episodes a week. Hollyoaks are very good at playing a major storyline one week, and then dropping it completely for a week or two before putting it back at the centre of the show, as are for all their faults EastEnders.
Neighbours and Home and Away take a different approach really and can have a big cliffhanger one day, but then go a couple of days with another story before resolving that cliffhanger. It's very rare in the Australian soaps for the dominant storyline to feature in every episode of the week.
The aussie soaps do that because actors are contracted to appear in a certain number of episodes per week. Thats why its rare for a character to be in all 5 episodes during a week. Unlike Corrie where Kym Ryder has been in every episode since this storyline began.
Instead of these double episodes it would be better if they just cut it down to 3 half hour episodes per week. Its obvious the amount of episodes is having an effect on the quality with storylines being dragged out - not just Corrie but Emmerdale too. And I still say Hollyoaks was better when it was 3 a week.
I think EastEnders does it very well (yes, unpopular opinion on here but I think they structure their storylines brilliantly). Corrie need to look back at how their successful long-running storylines became so successful. I don't think Richard Hillman would have been anywhere near as popular had we had Richard every single episode doing something "suspicious".
They need to give stories a break for a week or two and bring them back to the forefront later on, allowing other storylines to get their time in the limelight for a while. It's not as if we have any plot development with the amount of exposure they're getting - just endless Ryan moaning, Alex sneering, Michelle crying and Steve sighing.
Steve Frost has done a very poor job and instead of the show improving, it's just become worse recently. Kim has a big job on her hands.
Is it really nearly nine months that Violet has been pregnant. It may be just that I'm getting old, but it seems like hardly any time ago that the storyline began. Can anyone confirm when she and Sean 'did the do'?
Oh, and is it just me, or is her bump the most unrealistic ever seen on telly? It looks like she's stuffed a rectangular cushion up her top.
I have to agree with all the above folk's views on what's wrong with Corrie at the moment. It's sad that it's going this way, it's becoming really miss-able.
Anyone going to put together a list of each character's catch-phrase then? I would but my brain's addled today.
