Yahoo News Ex-Corrie star Bruce Jones slams violent storylines
Bruce Jones, who played Les Battersby on Coronation Street, has slammed the soap's "violence" and admitted he "can't watch it anymore".
Following shocking scenes in which Pat Phelan shot Luke Britton before burning him alive, the former Corrie star told The Sun that he thinks some of the recent content has gone too far.
"The violence when I was there wasn't as bad as that," he insisted. "I just don't know why it's gone that way. I can't watch it anymore because it's too violent.
"It's terrible. People said to me, 'I'm not watching anymore.' "They say to me, 'Did you watch that shit last night?'
"They call it 'shit' and I went, 'No, I watched some of it and turned it off. It's no good complaining to me, I can't do anything.'"
Bruce, who also argued that "just because the world's gone violent, doesn't mean the feel-good TV show has to go violent", said he thinks the show going to six episodes is to blame.
"It's gone to six episodes again – it went back down to five at one point and now it's gone back to six again and I think that's to cover everything they're doing, especially with all of this violence that's going on," he explained.
Revealing that people tell him they'd "rather watch Emmerdale", Bruce continued: "It's really sad that it's got to where it's got to now at this moment at time.
"My heart goes out to it. I love Coronation Street, I love it more than anything in the world but I'm glad I'm not in it now with all the violence in it – I'd probably get killed."
Last year, Coronation Street producer Kate Oates addressed some of the criticism over Phelan's dark storylines, after the villain forced Andy Carver to kill Vinny Ashford and then murdered Andy himself.
"I knew that people would find it very dark," she told Digital Spy. "Of course, one of the things that Corrie viewers always keep close to their hearts is Corrie warmth and Corrie humour. If you touch that or mess with it, people are bound to go: 'What are you doing to our Street? This isn't right'.
"But when you look at Corrie history, there have always been dark stories. There have been dark murders, even dating back to the '70s. And when Richard Hillman was beating a woman to death with a crowbar, that's pretty dark!"
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