CORONATION Street's shocking showdown between evil Geoff Metcalfe and wife Yasmeen might have left viewers shaken – but it delivered the soap's highest ratings for more than a year.
Over 8million viewers tuned in as the poisonous pensioner's abuse resulted in her her jamming a broken wine bottle into his neck.
Consolidated figures – which include catch-up viewing and people who recorded the show – showed that Coronation Street fans were gripped over a special week of episodes about Geoff and Yasmeen that aired last month.
The first, on Monday 27 April, saw her confronting her twisted husband after discovering that she had an STI thanks to him sleeping with prostitutes, delivering the show 7.89million viewers.
The next one, on the Wednesday, saw Yasmeen making a break for it – before Geoff discovered her getaway bag under the stairs and burnt it. That had 8.08million viewers.
Then the big showdown on Friday, a harrowing episode focusing entirely on Yasmeen's suffering at the hands of Geoff and culminating in his stabbing, saw the highest of the week, with 8.16million watching.
The grisly finale delivered Coronation Street its highest viewing figures since January 2019 in a major coup for soap boss Iain McLeod.
However, the ordeal is not over for Yasmeen, with her currently awaiting trial for the attack – and Iain telling The Sun her storyline is set to rumble on for months.
Explaining the ITV soap was keen to get "the right ending" to her nightmare, he explained: "The timelines have been shunted due to the lockdown but I think it's fair to imagine that it will be this year.
"What form that comeuppance is is in discussion. We wanted a redemptive ending for Yasmeen obviously and the toughest it's going to get for her is over the next months.
"It's towards the end of the year but the key thing is to impart the right message. For the sake of the people it has impacted we have to tell the right ending with some positivity."
However, the storyline has also proved wildly controversial, with hundreds of viewers complaining to Ofcom about it.
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