Court out: Tracy Barlow reacts to being found guilty in Coronation Street last night. Photograph: ITV/PA
Thank God she's gone. When the verdict was delivered last night at 8:34pm that Tracy Barlow, the wicked witch of the north-west, was in fact guilty of murdering Charlie Stubbs, Greater Manchester's very own JR Ewing, the audience yawned in relief. Only her grandmother Blanche, well, blanched. The courtroom melodrama that had not quite gripped, not even really hugged the nation (despite Noel Gallagher declaring his interest in it on Radio 1) was over. By the time the brass band played out the final credits moments before the 9pm watershed, Tracy was in a prison wagon, honking and wailing like an Aylesbury duck having a row with two dozen car alarms. Fifteen years. Good riddance.
The claim of the Coronation Street producers that the verdict was just because the soap is a "moral programme" misses the point (although I suppose it is nice to see that while good girls go to heaven, bad ones go to Weatherfield prison). No, the verdict was just for dramatic reasons and dramatic reasons only. Last week this blog condemned EastEnders for the crime of insincerity while at the same time applauded the Street for a convincing portrayal not of how people live, but at least of how they speak. The exception to this argument, however, resides at No 11 Coronation Street, where insults to dramatic intelligence are routine. They come from the mouths of the Barlows. The only thing real about them, at least at the moment, is that one of them smokes.
If this were a Proper Northern Family, even one whose patriarch reads the Guardian, Tracy Barlow would have been shown the road many moons ago. The problem for the characters who live with the raven-haired hellcat is this: what do you say to her? After all, it's just moral turpitude piled on moral turpitude. It's just another layer of slap. So when Tracy tries to sell baby Amy to the Croppers the only thing mum Deirdre feels she can do is web her neck like Steven Tyler from Aerosmith and cry "Tracy", making the word last three syllables. All Ken can do is offer some avuncular blather that even Bagpuss would yawn at. And all Blanche can do is say something so repugnant that you wonder, what is the point of this character? Then when Tracy does something else unpleasant - and murder is, it's safe to say, unpleasant - the whole routine is repeated. Why would the Barlows have put up with her? Because she's family? Hardly.
In this, Coronation Street let itself down. It built a story without humour. It built a story where the characters forgot how to communicate with one another. It almost became EastEnders.
