Coronation Street to return to six episodes a week from September

Both Coronation Street and Emmerdale will be returning to six episodes a week from September. 

The soaps have put in place strict health and safety measures to ensure filming can begin again.

Currently, both soaps have been running a reduced scheduled with just three episodes a week, but the teams will now be able to resume full production.

ITV announced the amazing news today in a statement: “We’re very pleased to announce that Coronation Street and Emmerdale will resume airing the normal pattern of six episodes each week from mid-September.

“This is testament to the incredible work that has been achieved in Manchester and Leeds by John Whiston, Managing Director of Continuing Drama and Head of ITV in the North for ITV Studios, and his dedicated and hard-working production teams, crews, writers and actors. 

“Both shows continue to film safely whilst adhering to the health and safety guidelines issued by the film and TV industry.”

Coronation Street and Emmerdale have remained on air throughout the lockdown, unlike rivals such as EastEnders and Hollyoaks which were forced to take a break. 

EastEnders is set to return to four episodes a week from September, and it will include a reference to the time-jump in the storyline. Hollyoaks will be off air until September. 

Corrie fans can expect big storylines with the upcoming 60th anniversary in September. 

Corrie boss Iain MacLeod recently teased fans, saying: “What we’ve had to strip out of our planning for the 60th was some of the bigger kind of Hollywood spectacular elements because we just simply didn’t have the time after we came back from lockdown to build and install all of the things that we needed to do what we’d originally planned to do.

“We peeled all that away much to my immense relief we discovered that what’s below all those layers of Hollywood spectacular are three or four really fantastically good stories.”

Iain added: “There’s a strong community story in there and community is something that’s undergone something of a resurgence under lockdown. It’s very important to do a community-focused story around the 60th.

“We’ve got a huge human interest story which emerges from something on screen right now that’s proved to be very popular with the audience. We’ve got the classic salacious love triangle in there.

“One we’ve stripped away all the crash, bang, wallop what we’ve been left with is essential soap viewing.”

Sounds like it’s going to be juicy!