Coronation Street reached a low of eight million in February 1973, when Pat Phoenix quit as Elsie Tanner, Violet Carson (battleaxe Ena Sharples) was written out for most of the year due to illness, and Doris Speed (haughty landlady Annie Walker) took two months' leave due to bereavement. The audience of ITV's other flagship soap opera "Crossroads" increased markedly at this time, as its established cast, such as Meg Richardson (Noele Gordon), grew in popularity. These sudden departures forced the writing team to quickly develop characters who had previously stood in the background. The roles of Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear), Deirdre Hunt
The Riordans on RTÉ. A spin-off series, "Bracken" was launched around "Pat Barry" (Gabriel Byrne), and which featured Irish actor Niall Toibin, Mick Lally and former "Coronation Street" actor Joe Lynch (who had played a lover of the Street's "Elsie Tanner"). After two series, that show was replaced as planned by its own spin-off, "Glenroe", which followed the Lally and Lynch characters as they moved from the fictional townland of Bracken to the outskirts of the fictional town of Glenroe. The axing of "Glenroe" in 2001 brought to an end the tradition of rural soap operas on RTÉ. Since the axing of