‘Coronation Street’ legend Charlie Lawson said that “viewers are getting turned off” by “too many woke storylines”.
Coronation Street legend Charlie Lawson said that 'viewers are getting turned off by too many young storylines'
The 64-year-old actor, who starred in the soap from 1989 to 2018 as Jim McDonald, criticised ITV bosses for pushing “political correctness” into the show after it was revealed that ‘Coronation Street’ only netted around 2.6 million viewers over Christmas.
Speaking to The Sun newspaper, he said: “Viewers are getting turned off by too many young storylines.
“In my day, in the Nineties, we didn’t have any woke issues, we didn’t have any political correctness, we had none of that [redacted]. We were able to tell stories and tell them properly.
“I suspect now half the meetings that they have upstairs on the sixth floor are about what is politically acceptable, all this stuff that they feel they have to address.
“And the silent majority of TV viewers are not interested in the slightest by all this [rubbish].”
“Where do you go from 2.6 million at Christmas? That is a very, very disappointing viewing figure.
“We were getting three or four times that for a single episode on a Monday night in the Nineties.
“I realise watching habits have totally changed, so they have a very difficult uphill struggle.”
The actor also pointed to the “woke” stories as the reason for many regulars opting to leave the show, including Lisa George (Beth Tinker), Chris Gascoyne (Peter Barlow), Alex Bain (Simon Barlow) and Peter Ash (Paul Foreman).
He explained: “I do know there are at least two long-term cast members who aren’t happy.
“There is a feeling there are too many episodes and that the production team don’t have time to give the attention to detail they did before.
“If you look at the quality of the writers we had, we had great writers.
“You know, we never worried about ratings because it wasn’t an issue. We were always getting ten to 12 million.
“And then Christmas time, like I think the McDonald family got 20 million once when there was a domestic violence issue.
“An awful lot of people are saying there’s nothing like that anymore — they can’t all be wrong.”
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