Villain du Jour

Pat Phelan is one of the best Corrie villains ever, says I. For me, he ranks right up there with Tony Gordon who is my all time favourite, and edging ahead of Richard Hillman who was second in line. He might even have a slim lead over Tony at the moment. He's slick, sly, sneaky, calculating, and cold. He doesn't lose his temper easily unless really pushed. He bides his time, thinks about what to do, schemes, and turns the tables on people. When he's backed into a corner, challenged, confronted, he keeps his cool for the most part, and always seems to find a way around what looks like inevitable exposure, either by twisting someone's words, blackmail, a plausible explanation (which is, of course, a total lie) or a grand gesture that gets him off the current hook.

Some fans see him as a one dimensional villain, purely over the top Panto and he does have elements of that. He practically twirled his metaphorical moustache over the final confrontation with Michael. I do think he's got layers and I do think he's even beginning to care for Eileen but his ambition and his greed are far too strong for him to really have true love and selfless committment to someone. 

He established his villain credentials early on, the first time he was with Coronation Street, by appealing to Owen's greed and financial straits over a building project. Pat wasn't going to use his own money, was he? He managed to take Owen's cash and reduce him to a minimum wage slave after Gary nearly killed him in a rage over him leering over Anna. Then to top things off, he used Anna's maternal need to protect her chick from assault charges and coerced her into bed as his blackmail payment. We are never quite sure if he would follow through with his threats if these characters would just stand up to him but as it's a soap, they never do and succumb to his blackmail and manipulations, leaving us cringing.


He dropped out of sight suddenly, leaving us all kind of hanging, without any closure. But guess what? He came back! Now down on his luck with a fresh divorce and a wife that pretty much took him for everything he had and then some, he slunk back to Weatherfield and got a job as a minimum wage slave for a local builder. Karma? Maybe. But Phelan isn't one to be kept down for long. He latched onto Jason Grimshaw and knew he was on to a good thing.

He continued to blackmail Anna over their one night stand so that she wouldn't continue to bad mouth him but he pushed her too far and she finally confessed to Kevin who understood and, surprisingly, didn't beat the crap out of Phelan. He seduced Eileen away from the lackluster Michael as a way of getting closer to Jason and his business, isolating her by manipulating both Sean and Todd out the door though Todd came back when Jason was beaten up at the hands of Callum Logan's cronies. Phelan took full advantage of Todd's lie that Jason's father, Tony, killed Callum and managed to drive Jason out of town on the pretense of protecting his family. He thought he could get his hands on Jason's business but Jason left Eileen in charge of the money so he had to step up the game.

Luckily, one of his old mates, Vinny, came to him with a scam. Invest in a project. Renovating an old building and constructing posh flats and taking deposits from people. There was an initial investment for an office set up and a barebones construction start up but there was never any intent on completion and Vinny and Phelan would skip town with the cash. Phelan was all for it and worked on Eileen to invest Jason's inheritance from Tony. She hovered around the project like a pesky fly but he seemed to be able to handle her good intentioned interference but he hadn't counted on Michael Rodwell.

Michael was still around and still constantly suspicious of his old love rival. Michael is very much the stereotypical "loser", a man that is not seen as a strong, macho man. He has a heart condition and he quickly backs down from confrontations but Michael is an honest man and we know he's the better of the two. Michael overheard a conversation he wasn't meant to and tripped into the scam. He was like a dog with a bone, determined to bring Phelan down and he almost did it.

In a final confrontation, Michael had the evidence against Phelan and we watched and waited. Would Phelan actually cross the line and kill Michael? It certainly seemed like he would. Phelan has threatened violence in the past, he's also got a lot of dodgey mates willing to do violence on his behalf for cash in hand. I am never quite sure if he would actually get his hands dirty and do it himself but he seemed to be backed into a corner and there were no witnesses. Luck was again on Phelan's side when Michael had another heart attack and he left Michael to die on the floor of the project offices, much like Richard Hillman left Duggie Fergusson crumpled and broken after a fall over a balcony in another renovation project.

Phelan always seems to have that luck following him. Some use the expression "horseshoe up your backside" to explain the unexplicable tendency for some people to dig themselves out of astonishingly deep holes. My Nan used to say "He could fall into a bucket of poo and come up smelling of roses". Phelan always seems to be able to talk his way out of a thorny situation and make himself look the victim or the good guy. This time is no different. His business partner has had enough of all the aggravation and has scarpered off with all the money, leaving Phelan with nothing but an empty building site for all his trouble. He's been duped just like all the people that have lost their deposit money! But again, he'll be able to claim that he is as much of a victim as the people deprived of their savings.

I think Todd better watch his back and make sure he knows a good solicitor. Todd knew what was going on and helped sell the non-existent flats to unsuspecting punters. I think Todd was hoping to find a way to bring Phelan down himself, from the inside, but it won't look that way if the police get involved and Phelan is very, very good at spinning a plausible story out of the fairy tale.

Connor McIntyre plays Pat Phelan and he's absolutely brilliant at it. As always, the character is much enhanced by the skill of the portrayer and Pat Phelan could have been little more than a pantomime villain in someone else's hands. He wouldn't have lasted as long and he would certainly have fallen from grace and favour by now or with the end of this storyline and found himself behind bars. It could still happen, and it probably will at some point over another scheme if not this one. He might not have killed Michael by his own hand but he left him to die and he scammed peoples' life savings. He's done some pretty nasty things to other, as well and if Phelan is going to be a longer term character, they will have to be careful. After all, it's a soap and he'll have to pay for his misdeeds at some point.

I can't wait to see where this will go.

Tvor (Twitter @tvordlj)

Karl Munro - Evil Villain or Misunderstood Fool

"Evil personified", "evil scum", "super villain", those are some of the phrases I've seen describing Karl Munro in blog comments and various Corrie discussions and forums the last few days and weeks since both the fire and his alleged murder of Sunita. But is he truly evil?  In the tradition of most Corrie villains, he's desperate to hold on to the one he loves and has taken desperate measures to do it.

I'm not defending him, oh no. He left Sunita at the bottom of the cellar stairs at the start of the fire. And that was more calculating than an impulsive or panic move. It was still based on self-preservation. If he'd pulled her out, she'd have recovered and told that he started the fire. He didn't set the fire intending on killing anyone but alas, a fire fighter died and two little kids were deprived of their mother.


Most of the Corrie villains who murder people do so out of the aforementioned desperation. They may even plan to kill someone but usually feel pushed to the wall and can see no other way out lest their other nefarious deeds be uncovered or they are after revenge.

Alan Bradley pummeled Rita when she uncovered his fraud. He didn't intend on killing her in Blackpool, he wanted to take her back to Weatherfield to prove that he hadn't done her in!  John Stape wasn't evil. He was an idiot who kept getting into situations that he couldn't get himself out of.

Tony Gordon had more of an evil edge. He was a control freak and when he couldn't have Carla's heart, his jealousy prompted him to take Liam out of the picture permanently. But when he discovered that Maria was pregnant with Liam's baby, he showed a flash of remorse. Still, it didn't stop him trying to kill Jed Stone and later, Carla herself and, when Carla knocked out the hit man he'd sent, he let her think she'd killed him. More control, you see. She was going to expose him as Liam's murderer to Maria whom he'd fallen for, after a fashion. She was able to give him the family he craved and he was determined that Carla was not going to take it away from him. He nearly killed Roy Cropper who haunted him as his conscience but saved him and turned himself in only to break out of prison, kidnap Carla and Hayley and later blow up the factory and die in a blaze of "glory". Tony Gordon certainly was mad by that point.

We've had the mad nanny, Carmel, who became obsessed with the hapless Martin Platt. We had Don Brennan who set Mike Baldwin's factory on fire, kidnapped Alma and nearly bashed Mike's skull in before driving a car into the viaduct. But there again, Don's mind was overtaken by madness and revenge. I still don't consider these people "evil".  Kirsty Soames was not evil. She was controlling and troubled and had learned to survive the only way she had learned from her father, with aggression.

There was Richard Hillman as well. He tried to convince Audrey she was losing her mind and tried to kill her by fire.  He left Duggie Fergusson at the bottom of a stairwell when he'd fallen over the railings during a struggle. He went to his flat and robbed Duggie's safe but Duggie was dead when he returned. He killed his ex-wife because she was going to expose his double dealings. That was an impulse action. He nearly killed Emily Bishop twice so he could get her hands on her house. She'd entered into a scheme where he'd front her the cash value of the house and then inherit it after her death but he ran into serious financial difficulties and tried to hurry things along. Maxine Peacock's death was "collateral damage" as she'd walked into the house just as he had struck Emily so he had to bash her as well. Richard did feel guilt and remorse but was desperate to keep his new family and when the walls closed in on him and he couldn't see any other way out, he tried to take his family into the bottom of the canal.

Tracy Barlow could be considered Evil in many ways. She doesn't feel much remorse no matter who she hurts and is devious when she's attempting revenge. She's also shallow, selfish and not that bright. There are some redeeming features. She does love her daughter and her parents and loved Blanche as well even if she can be a bit mean and rude to them. She claimed to love Steve though I never believed it. She doesn't know how to truly love and be loved by a man. She'd be near the top of the Evil list in second place. 

To me, "evil" is someone that is cold, calculating and feels no remorse or guilt and usually on the edge of insanity. They have absolutely no redeeming qualities.  This is clearly not what we're seeing from Karl. The closest baddies  to that definition that we've seen on Coronation Street since I've been watching is not Alan Bradley, Richard Hillman and not even Tony Gordon though he's a pretty close second place. It's Maya Sharma  who certainly had that out-of-her-mind edge and Frank Foster who was as ruthless as a ruthless thing.

Mad Maya lived for risk and excitement. She attached herself to Dev and when she lost him, she took revenge on Sunita slowly. She pretended to be Sunita and married 7 men as an immigration fraud scheme as well as bigamy and managed to get Sunita arrested on her wedding day. She later kidnapped both Dev and Sunita, blew up all of Dev's shops (knowing there would be families living in the flats above) and then nearly succeeded in doing the same to Dev and Sunita and when that didn't work, tried to run them down in her car where she'd been sitting watching the shop burn with them inside. No remorse. No guilt. Just seething insanity. *That's* evil if you ask me!

Frank Foster would be up at the top of the list as well, sharing the honours with Maya. He was cold and calculating. He was ruthless. He was a rapist who knew it but had no remorse. He had no visible guilt. His mother thought him a monster though she didn't intend on killing him.  He was definitely Evil in my reckoning.

Karl? Evil? He's just a sad, pathetic fool who's lost everything due to his own stupidity. He can't take responsibility for that so he blames everyone else. He's jealous and smug. He does most definitely feel guilty about Toni's death and I think Sunita's as well though that was done as a desperate measure. The guilt is going to eat away at him over time. Will it end in another of those soap cliche moments where his crimes catch up with him? Will Stella threaten to shop him to the police so Karl feels he has no choice but to try to kill them both? "If I can't have you, nobody will".

The ominous words he uttered in the fire, "At least we'll die together", suddenly become a lot more foreboding.