I'm not a prude, not by a long chalk, nor am I one of the new puritans, but I've finally given up on the last couple of soap operas I've been watching. Yes I admit to enjoying watching soaps, TV isn't there for intellectual challenge or stimulation it's for entertainment but the soaps are no longer entertaining.
I'm not sure which started pissing me off first, Radio 4's The Archers or the BBC's EastEnders. The Archers is now a ludicrous parody of what it used to be with more social problems and misfits than the most depressed inner city suburb in the worst modern city. The Archers has been hijacked by victim obsessed social justice warriors who are now the only people who listen. Likewise EastEnders, very BBC.
Now then, on to Coronation Street. Here's a quick idea of the characters now inhabiting one small street known as Corrie:
A gay vicar who is now a heroin addict.
A gay bloke who works for a dodgy legal firm.
A gay bloke who is as camp as a row of tents.
A gay mechanic who is about to date rape a heterosexual character.
A gay woman who cleans windows.
A gay woman who is the daughter of a factory owner.
A gay Muslim woman who is married to a Muslim bloke.
There was a transgendered 'woman', now shuffled off the mortal coil, who was obviously a woman playing the role quite unconvincingly, far too much like a real woman.
Then there are any number of unfaithful, multi-married/divorced heterosexuals, not to mention numerous murderers over the years and several disasters such as gas explosions and trams crashing off the viaduct onto the street. Recently there was the most convoluted attempt at a racist murder that turned out to have nothing whatsoever to do with race, as we all knew, but the writers had to clamber on a very rickety bandwagon that was verging on farcical.
So if that urban nightmare isn't for you you decide to forget about the numerous disasters to befall the place, such as planes and helicopters crashing onto the residents, and you move to the Yorkshire Dales and the picturesque village of Emmerdale. Big mistake, here is, from memory, a list of characters living in Emmers:
A gay lad who owns a scrapyard and has found his younger sister who has recently snogged another young female character.
A gay bloke who married the above then got a female character pregnant, left his 'husband' but is now back playing happy families with him and the poor little offspring.
A gay doctor popped into the village for a few months while the 'husband' and 'husband' were split up.
A gay vet who seduced her previously heterosexual boss.
A pub owner who has slept with most of the men in the village, as well as Leeds and Bradford, but is now having a passionate lesbian fling with above vet.
The heterosexual people in the village are mostly unfaithful and several times divorced. Watch out for tedious times in this one because it usually means a cull of characters by mass murder or a whopping great disaster. If urban and rural life really was like this, rather than booming, our population would be shrinking as millions of us fled for more peaceful lives in somewhere like Syria or Afghanistan.
No wonder they warn you at the beginning of these soaps that you might find them disturbing and offer helpline numbers at the end for anybody disturbed by the content.
