I’ve been a lifelong Coronation Street fan, loyal through its highs and lows – but there is only so much a viewer like me can take. Like many, I have been forced to switch off, and I fear they have lost me for good.

Corrie has always thrived on its working-class realism, northern grit, humour, warmth, and strong characters. However, changes in tone, storytelling, and character use have sparked growing backlash among fans. The soap must do a lot to win me back – and they need to be quick about it.

When I think of Corrie, I picture Elsie Tanner scowling into a mirror and saying, “Ay, Elsie, you’re just about ready for the knacker yard.” The show’s creator, Tony Warren, apparently borrowed that line from his Aunt Lily—a turn of phrase my own grandmother used.

For me, that’s always been Corrie’s heart: characters sketched from life, their laugh lines and language lovingly preserved—warm, working-class, and proud of it.

That’s the beauty of soap that I think has been willfully ignored and sometimes is treated with outright disdain: you come to know these people—their ups and downs, the cycles of their lives, the way they move.

So much of soap is in a wince or an arched eyebrow, or in moments that tug at a memory, or a feeling of community. So much of that, from iconic characters to ordinary storylines, is now gone. Think of the sparse, gentle, yet honest way that Corrie told two very different storylines: the suicide of Aidan Connor and Hayley Cropper’s transgender storyline.

A couple of years ago, I visited an exhibition on Coronation Street. In one corner, Ken Barlow’s life played on a soundless loop. I remember thinking, ‘I can’t believe Ken was ever that young’—not out of judgement (I recently got the first clear deep line on my own forehead), but because these characters slot into your life like favourite aunts and uncles; there’s a hominess to it.

The problem is that Corrie has become relentlessly miserable. All of its storylines are important and have a place, from domestic violence and coercive control to grooming, but the misery is constant. From scene to scene, it feels like Corrie hits every possible type of human suffering until my brain aches with it.

Suddenly, I realised, ‘I don’t have to put myself through this anymore.’

I’m 34; I’ve spent decades watching soaps and a few happy years writing about them. I came to the—honestly, personally startling—realisation that I just don’t want to watch anymore.

I’m from Manchester. I’ve seen my fair share of public marital bust-ups, heard the quiet, loaded gossip in hairdressers, and ripped enough pub beer mats to shreds—and if you need more than that to make a soap entertaining and worthwhile, then you need to step back and remember the genre you are investing in.

Other long-time viewers of the show have articulated their annoyance with the changed style, storytelling and character use—and have often felt disregarded. As former Coronation Street actress Sally Ann Matthews put it in a recent interview (via The Mirror), ‘We, as a cast, have been having these conversations for three or four years, and the crew. Their family and people in the street [are] saying they don’t watch it anymore. They said, “Oh it’s all about the police, I don’t know who anybody is”.’

It’s fascinating and telling, then, that Iain MacLeod, the ITV soap boss, has expressed some reluctance to listen to fan reactions on social media. It seems unfair to take often heartfelt, thoughtful, and constructive feedback this way, especially given the unique bonds soaps share with their audiences.

Especially when they have radically changed the show’s identity in recent years. A show, which was once so grounded in everyday working-class Manchester life, with the occasional serial killer, campaigns to ‘Free the Weatherfield One,’ and tram crashes, has now shifted to relentless, high-stakes, crime-ridden, sensational storylines.

It should be a concern for all soaps that, in cleaving parts of themselves to fit in with what the world ‘wants,’ in a modern, streaming era, they are devaluing and chucking out their unique selling point.

Consider the number of stunts and big set pieces as an example, take Corriedale, a one-off meeting of Coronation Street and Emmerdale: it had the opportunity to stage a stunt, an impressive and beautifully executed feat, and afterwards really press down on the wounds, get in there up close, and unfurl the emotions and consequences, and the history, and reactions of these characters we know and care about.

Instead, none of it feels explored enough; none of it feels lived in. It feels like manufactured shock that could have been so much more. Why merge all of these fantastic characters together only for them to have hardly any classic soap-y interactions?

Ultimately, Netflix, which Corrie is trying to replicate the appeal of, will never have a Ken Barlow or an Eric Pollard, and they will never be able to produce as many affectionate, knowing smiles from their audience as when two such characters meet.

It’s also important to acknowledge that issue-based storylines are also suffering, despite their significance and real value. Corrie has long raised much-needed awareness of important social and medical issues that impact real people.

However, it’s hard not to feel as though each storyline is mined for its most devastating emotional reality and then swiftly replaced by the next.

Consider Kevin Webster’s testicular cancer diagnosis, which was quickly followed by his sister Debbie Webster’s diagnosis with dementia. These storylines needed time to be digested by the audience and explored from all their angles; they should have been allowed to breathe and make their proper emotional impact.

Soaps have the unique benefit of allowing viewers to say, ‘you’ve known and cared for these characters for years, feel this,’ and that emotional pull is so important.

Perhaps worse is the way the show seems determined to extract even more drama from these situations, with Kevin faking the need for ongoing treatment and Debbie being wrongfully accused of causing the crash.

What’s missing from Corrie isn’t just a tone. It’s love, care, attention to detail, warmth, and careful storytelling that respects the community, the characters, and its origins.