Maureen Lipman reveals how long she will stay at Coronation Street as she takes swipe at soap’s storylines
Coronation Street star Maureen Lipman has suggested that the show needs to return to its roots in order to recover from falling viewing figures.
In recent years, the number of people watching the linear broadcast have plummeted, with just 2.6 million tuning in on Christmas Day, with many choosing to tune in on streaming service ITX instead.
The actress, who plays nosey Evelyn Plummer in the ITV soap, has suggested that sensationalist storylines that are designed to shock viewers need to be dropped.
Evelyn first appeared in the show in 2018, with long-serving character Tyrone Dobbs (Alan Halsall) finding out that she was his estranged grandmother.
Some of her recent storylines have included lying about her daughter Cassie’s (Claire Sweeney) death and then forcing her to go cold turkey following a drug addiction.
Ongoing stories include Paul Foreman’s battle with motor neurone disease and murderer Harvey Gaskell appealing his life sentence.
Despite her distain at such stories, Lipman has told the Beyond the Title podcast that she understands the show’s duty to cover such storylines: ‘We’ve come to a point in Corrie now where people are getting murdered in knicker factories’ she said.
‘We’re having domestic abuse. Anything that ticks the box of social problems in the 21st century is going to be in your local soap.’
Reminiscing about the early episodes of the show, of which her late husband Jack Rosenthal penned over 130 in the first decade, she said: ‘Back then you had the freedom to put Martha, Minnie and Ena in the snug and have a conversation about Ben-Hur,’
‘It’s never been political but I always like it when the women sit down and go, ‘Ooh, Donald Trump, ain’t his hair shocking.’
‘I inherited Coronation Street from Jack’ she added.
Lipman continues to take regular breaks from the show, to allow her to take on other projects, such as two recent productions at Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre.
‘It’s a good enough job, it’s a little hard – there’s good and there’s bad but it’s a nice group of people, it’s nice being up North,’
‘I’ll stick around for a bit longer.’