CORONATION Street will not turn into Coronavirus Street – after the soap’s bosses decided against mentioning the outbreak at all in upcoming episodes.
Producers were worried that as the final scenes shot on the famous set will not air until the summer, anything they included ran the risk of being outdated if the pandemic was over by then.
An insider told HOAR Online that we won’t hear Ken Barlow and co using terms like ‘social distancing’ or ‘lockdown’ because no one knew what measures would still be in play when filming was still going on.
The source explained: “They were finishing scenes that had already been written, so there are no references to social distancing and the like.
“As the episodes won’t air until the summer they wouldn’t have known – and still don’t know now – what the situation is going to be by then.
“Once production begins again then the writers can decide how to reference the pandemic – hopefully in the past tense.”
Soaps regularly add in references to news events – such as general elections or major football tournaments – so they seem in step with current goings-on despite being filmed months in advance.
Corrie’s hard-working cast and crew were shooting episodes at a breakneck speed last month to make sure fans got their fix throughout the government lockdown.
ITV shut down production on the show and its sister soap Emmerdale on 23 March, admitting: “We now feel that the time has come to stop filming.”
Corrie story producer Lindsay Williams explained last week that production was going so fast before filming was shut down that entire episodes were being completed in hours.
Speaking to the Coronation Street blog, she explained: “We knew we had to get as many episodes finished as we could to give ourselves the best shot of staying on screen as long as possible. So it was all hands to the pump.
“Writers rewriting scenes at a moment’s notice, producers making split second decisions, crew running around trying to get everything set up to shoot as fast as possible and our amazing cast and directors filming quicker than they have ever before and all in a way that kept everyone as safe as possible.”
Like Emmerdale, Corrie is currently airing three times a week – on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – in a bid to make sure they don’t run out of episodes.
