Why do Emmerdale absolutely destroy their long running characters?

[Scarlett.]

There's Andy Sugden who went from farmers son to, wife beater....and IMO the character has never shaken off that title, there's no real going back for him
http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00515/SNN2503X-384_515932a.jpg

and now there is Ashley, once the condesending prick of a Priest, now a guy who beats up his elderly father
http://i2.cdnds.net/12/14/618x391/soaps_emmerdale_6216_2.JPG

I imagine it's gonna be next to impossible to make the character what he truely once was again. What's next? Betty starts kidnapping children for Turner's sexual fantasies?

[Marsh.]

They've gotten really bad for treating the long servers like crap. Viv and Terry's exits last year were terrible.

[Scarlett.]

They've gotten really bad for treating the long servers like crap. Viv and Terry's exits last year were terrible.

I can't believe that that is how they finished them off, especially Viv, her funeral wasnt even in Emmerdale :/ Deena Payne was disappointed http://www.atvtoday.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=537:deena-payne-disappointed-by-emmerdale-exit&catid=24:soap-news&Itemid=27

John Middleton isnt happy either
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s12/emmerdale/news/a377766/emmerdale-john-middleton-fans-avoid-me-over-ashley-abuse-plot.html

[Jords]

Should be called Emessadale

[Shaun]

clever pun jords. -steals it-

but no I've noticed other soaps doing it - Eastenders in particular. Pat just given surprise cancer (although she might've wanted to leave, I don't remember), Kat and Alfie turning into adulterous babyswap trainwrecks, Phil being given a closet gay stalking murderer son that aged 5 years in 3 months, Heather just getting killed...

it's not even dramatic any more. why do people watch this drivel? the acting's poor, the situations increasingly daft, the morals skewered, the editing predictable, the characters typecast (Derek. Really!?), the dialogue reduced to catchphrases and the entire mood dismal. It's like people seek misery.

[waterhog]

i think they are pushing boundaries - yer i do think it was bad they done this to ashley as these people do exist to in society - committed and nice and decent. now he is a bad boy.

[Z]

I've not seen soaps in a couple of years now but I was always a Corrie and Emmerdale fan. Disappointed to read that they killed Viv and Terry in a fire and that they've turned Ashley into a domestic abuser. It's ridiculous. The kind hearted vicar should never be given that dramatic a change; nor should two of the biggest characters in the soap be killed off in a fire! At least when they killed off Tricia they made it wonderfully dramatic, the chimney thing was so sad.

[Scarlett.]

I've not seen soaps in a couple of years now but I was always a Corrie and Emmerdale fan. Disappointed to read that they killed Viv and Terry in a fire and that they've turned Ashley into a domestic abuser. It's ridiculous. The kind hearted vicar should never be given that dramatic a change; nor should two of the biggest characters in the soap be killed off in a fire! At least when they killed off Tricia they made it wonderfully dramatic, the chimney thing was so sad.

I agree with this, Ashley has been in the for 16 years, and he has never shown any shades of being an abusive prick. And as for Viv and Terry, you can watch how unspectacularly their deaths played out here
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My feeling is that the new producer, Stuart Blackburn (who took over after Gavin Blyth passed away during the filming of the above fire), wants to make the show have more of an urban, gritty feel, something Emmerdale shouldnt have.

[waterhog]

what ever they do at the farm - its still no1 <