Coronation Street is fairly well known for its handling of contemporary issues.
Over the past few years, they’ve tackled things like homophobia, racism, trauma, and abortion.
One of the things they also tend to tackle quite regularly is drug addiction.
Most recently, the soap has depicted vicar Billy Mayhew’s descent into drug addiction and how this has affected his working life and relationships with other people.
Last night, Billy bought some heroin from his brother Lee, and the two of them sat by the pews of the church and got high.
Viewers did not see the pair taking the drug, but were shown the after-effects of it as Lee claimed: “This must be what heaven feels like.”
Oh Billy, what have you done? 😱#Corrie #CoronationStreet #Billy #Summer pic.twitter.com/QMuSzpnHZ7
— Coronation Street (@itvcorrie) February 26, 2018
The Sun reports that 87 viewers contacted Ofcom to complain about the content of the scene, with many on Twitter stating that it was too “disturbing” to be shown on TV before the watershed.
Some viewers also claimed that the scene was “disrespectful” to religion.
https://twitter.com/M44Tweet/status/968228016068485120
https://twitter.com/annabreeze55/status/968243643562721282
corrie was built on strong females and humour not this, this was disturbing and disrespectful to religion and people who suffer chronic pain everyday like myself and manage on prescription drugs, truly sad to see what was a great soap reduced to this
— Diane Pickering (@DianePickering9) February 27, 2018
Yep I agree. I thought Billy looked dead. I don’t want to see crap like that. The Bethany story line is tiresome too.
— Donna Grice (@DonnaGrice12) February 27, 2018
Not impressed with the drug storyline in #Corrie. One step too far.
— Fiona Chapman | Find Your Freedom (@FionaChapman1) February 26, 2018
@itvcorrie im absolutely fuming with the billy storyline doing drugs in a church is disrespectful and wrong shame on you corrie 😡 😡 😡
— Lucy Williams (@lucywilliams628) February 26, 2018
A spokesperson for the programme said:
“Coronation Street has a strong tradition of tackling serious contemporary issues in a responsible way.
“In upcoming episodes, we will be showing the very negative side of drug taking as Billy’s life starts to fall apart.”
https://twitter.com/davidlrattigan/status/968463991352815616
