Reception
Columnist Grace Dent has described Carla as "...an alluring vision, raven haired, classy, sultry and replete with guile". The episode aired on 3 December 2008, in which Carla married Tony Gordon attracted an impressive peak of 10.5 million viewers. In an online poll conducted by MSN Entertainment, Carla Connor was voted as 'Soapland's Sexiest Female of 2008', with more than 31% of votes. At the 2008 Inside Soap Awards, the character was voted 'Best Bitch'. King was awarded "Best Actress" at the 2012 British Soap Awards. On Digital Spy's 2012 end of year reader poll, King was nominated for "Best Female Soap Actor" and came fifth with 9.7% of the vote.
In January 2009, the character was heralded as the new Elsie Tanner: "strong, dark, mouthy, pushy, full of herself and nobody's fool, ready to put the world to rights with another lashing of lipstick. Has Coronation Street finally found the new Elsie Tanner in Carla Gordon I'm starting to think that perhaps they might have". The return of the character on 19 October 2009, after an eight month absence, drew large ratings for the show's episodes which were watched by 9.88m (42.2%) and 10.24m (40.5%) respectively.
Radio Times soaps columnist David Brown gave mixed comments in his response to Carla's rape storyline. He made the point that while it was being treated with more sensitivity than the rape of Toyah Battersby (Georgia Taylor) was, back in 2001, the impression was that the writing team were placing too much pain and anguish upon Carla's character: "By having Carla undergo a vicious violation like rape, it begins to feel that she’s being systematically targeted by the storyliners. There’s no denying that the scenes in this evening’s double bill are powerfully acted by Alison King, but there seems to be an underlying mission to crack open Carla’s carapace and expose her vulnerability. In the wider world, rapists often choose their targets regardless of the victim’s circumstance, so there’s no saying that Carla wouldn’t suffer an assault of this sort. But, in a fictional setting, it does begin to look cruel when so much anguish is piled onto one person’s shoulders."
Sarah Ellis of Inside Soap said that Carla was great to watch when she is with Peter. She added that they are "like a car crash waiting to happen".
Read more about this topic: Carla Connor
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