The writers on Coronation Street have an ‘eye for an eye’ attitude when it comes to murder. You take a life and your days are usually numbered, pal. Just look at the evidence: homicidal Richard Hillman drowned in the canal, desperate John Stape died following a car crash and psychopathic Pat Phelan was fatally stabbed.
So surely there’s only one storyline option open for Gary Windass? Death! (Scheduled, naturally, in the week of the Britain’s Got Talent semi-finals – whenever they turn out to be.)
But should Weatherfield’s latest high-profile killer end up in a body bag? OK, so Corrie exists in a very moral universe and good has to eventually be seen to triumph over evil. But should Gary be lumped in with all the other past villains who gruesomely reduced the neighbourhood’s head count?
On the surface, the evidence decrees that he must. He did away with Rick Neelan in a woodland showdown and, now that Sarah knows this secret, Gary’s actions will surely only grow more desperate.
And yet there is the case of a Corrie character being given a reprieve despite having blood on their hands. Tracy Barlow did away with love rat Charlie Stubbs back in 2007 and was even put behind bars for a protracted period.
And yet she’s now a free woman – her crime only ever really referred to as the punchline to a throwaway gag. The reason for this rehabilitation comes down to the fact Charlie was a nasty piece of work who’s missed by precisely no one. Not that this excuses murder, but it would certainly have been harder to get an audience on Tracy’s side had she, say, butchered Maxine Peacock on her living room floor.
When it comes to Gary, there are parallels. Rick may have come to the aid of people in need, but he was hardly Mother Teresa. This was a man who offered money with a side order of menaces should his clients fail to pay the cash back. Nobody in his mobile phone’s address book will be sending wreaths to the funeral should his body ever be dug up.
If Gary now goes on to murder Brian Packham by beating him to death with a canister of cola cubes, then his fate will be sealed. But, as things stand, Gary could escape the storyliner’s scythe, for the main reason that his victim was so irredeemably vile.
So is there an alternative to Gary meeting his maker? In what way should he be made to suffer for his actions? When we look again at Tracy, we find a character who didn’t really experience any proper happiness for a full decade after she killed Charlie.
And even now, when she finally has the family unit she’s always craved, there’s the sneaking suspicion that daughter Amy may have inherited a few too many of her more ruthless personality traits.
With Gary, the Corrie writers have a real opportunity to show what committing a crime such as this does to a person’s already damaged psyche. Francis Ford Coppola charted the corruption of Michael Corleone’s soul over three epic movies in the Godfather trilogy.
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has spun five series out of gangster Tommy Shelby’s turmoil. Gary Windass already has Tommy’s brutal undercut hairstyle, so why not treat his tale with the same level of nuance?
Rather than have him go out in a blaze of pyrotechnics and mayhem, let’s see Gary’s descent become a long-term focus of the drama. He’s far too interesting a character to sacrifice for the sake of a ratings spike.
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