Coronation Street bosses fear second coronavirus shut down

(Picture: ITV/Metro.co.uk)

Coronation Street bosses Iain McLeod and John Whiston have revealed that they fear a second coronavirus shut down.

The ITV soap was forced to halt production back in March amid the pandemic, and in an effort to ensure it remained on screens, the episodes which had been completed were rationed out at three a week, as opposed to the usual six.

The cast and crew were given the green light to resume filming last month, which means that — for the time being — Corrie will remain on air, after pre-lockdown episodes run out.

Filming has resumed (Picture: ITV)

John Whiston, Managing Director of Continuing Drama at ITV, told Metro.co.uk: ‘It has been incredible from every bit of the team. All the heads of departments who have worked out how they can work safely.

‘The cast have been brilliant – the appetite to come back has been really gratifying, especially given that we have all watched the news and done nothing but, so the fear that engendered was strong.’

While production has resumed, it seems as if Corrie will remain at three episodes a week for the time being, as John revealed that he fears a second lockdown — which would of course halt production once more.

He told us: ‘We’ll get up to six as soon as we can – it’s a phased return so we will build units up to three or four. We will start producing more and build a buffer – the fear is a second lockdown and we have to close again so we don’t want to outright say.

(Picture: ITV)

‘We have our 60^th coming up – we do have a plan for stories peak and of course Christmas – if we get knocked off kilter too much, we might have to do a Christmas bubble. We have lots of plans about all of that.’

As John noted, the 60th anniversary is approaching, and Executive Producer Iain MacLeod revealed how the pandemic — and the new social distancing guidelines — have affected plans for the event, and how a second lockdown could result in the episodes being transmitted later than planned.

He said: ‘What we have had to strip out for our 60^th is the Hollywood spectacular elements as we didn’t have time to build and install what we had originally planned.

‘What we have discovered beneath the spectacular is a strong community story which has really resurged under lockdown.

‘There’s a real sense of street community again now. We’ve got a huge human interest story which emerges from something on screen now which has been engaging. A classic salacious love triangle is also in there.

‘We have stripped away the crash, bang wallop but still have some unmissable storylines. If we lock down again, we will still have those episodes, it will just transmit later. But I am confident we can hit some classic Corrie episodes for the anniversary and Christmas.’

Coronation Street continues Wednesday 10 June at 7:30pm on ITV.

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