Coronation Street spoilers follow.
Coronation Street will be facing horror this Super Soap Week as a cataclysmic storm rages through Weatherfield, causing the sinkhole in the Platt family's back garden to become unstable once again.
The sinkhole initially opened up last year while Ray Crosby (Mark Frost) was trying to buy up properties on the street, but viewers may have noticed that the chasm hasn't featured much on the show this year.
Corrie producer Iain MacLeod has now told Digital Spy and other media that the upcoming sinkhole stunt, which will cause the ground to open up once again, has been in the works for a long time now, with the plan initially being to make use of it again during the soap's 60th anniversary celebrations last December.
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"When we first collapsed the Platts' back garden, it was with half an eye on doing something maybe around the 60th anniversary," he explained. "Then when we got to the 60th, the COVID restrictions that were in place meant that we probably couldn't do quite what we were intending to do with the sinkhole there.
"A number of times since, people in production have asked: 'Shall we just fill that hole in?' I've always said: 'No! We're leaving it because I've got a plan for that'. We just needed to wait until we were actually able to do the thing I wanted to do.
"We've finally got to a stage now, thanks to the incredible graft and professionalism of our crew, where we were able to finally do it."
MacLeod added that he had found the delay in filming the sinkhole drama to be "a long old, frustrating wait for me", but it sounds as if the upcoming scenes will be well worth the wait.
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"Every time we were in the Platts' or somebody referenced the sinkhole, I'd think: 'Oh, I just want to get on with the big thing that we want to do'. So we finally got there and I couldn't be more pleased with the end result."
Although it has now been possible for the soap to film the epic scenes involved with the sinkhole collapse and the storm, the real-world COVID-19 situation has still made shooting more difficult and MacLeod confirmed that working within restrictions "certainly made things tricky".
"It wasn't a return to post-COVID normality at all. In the end, we had 70+ separate close contact cohorts, which is when you put a couple of actors or a group of actors in a bubble, and subject them to an additional testing regime, to make sure they're COVID safe. We had already been somewhat used to doing that over the last 12 months, here and there," he said.
"There are certain things that you can't really do from two metres away. We felt we were very well steeped in the ways of COVID-safe filming, so we felt we could ramp it up just for this week. We wanted to really go to town on these moments of closeness and intimacy, which we've been having to ration for the last 12 months.
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"But the COVID measures were in large part still enforced, which did make it incredibly challenging. And once again, I can't praise our crew and our cast and our production team enough."
Super Soap Week will tie several major plots into the natural disasters of the storm and sinkhole collapse, with Abi Franklin (Sally Carman) and Corey Brent (Maximus Evans) set to engage in a shocking confrontation following the outcome of Corey's trial for Abi's son Seb's horrific murder. Jenny (Sally Ann Matthews) and Johnny Connor (Richard Hawley)'s relationship will also come under the spotlight as they are caught up in the disaster.
Away from the sinkhole, villain Harvey Gaskell (Will Mellor) will make a shock escape when his prison van crashes and return to the cobbles seeking revenge, while Dev Alahan (Jimmi Harkishin) faces a heartbreaking choice when he and the twins are caught up in the prison van accident.
Coronation Street airs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7.30pm and 8.30pm.
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Reporter & Sub-Editor, Digital Spy Susannah is a freelance writer and sub-editor, specialising in the entertainment industry. She graduated in 2014, with a BA in English and American Literature and Creative Writing, and an MA in Creative Producing. She’s been writing for Digital Spy ever since, after first getting involved through work experience, and has written hundreds of stories for the site on a range of topics, from The Sims to Doctor Who. Susannah has also written for Reveal Magazine. Her special interests are soaps (her Mastermind subject would be 2000s Coronation Street), Marvel and Star Wars. She can also quote far too many lines from Friends and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
