The highly-anticipated pay-off of Coronation Street‘s flash-forward is almost upon us, with both a murder and a dance floor on Carla Connor (Alison King) and Lisa Swain’s (Vicky Myers) wedding day.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor, eat your heart out!
Ahead of the epic week, Corrie producer Kate Brooks has spilled the details on how five separate story strands – each relating to the potential victims – fit into the aftermath of Swarla’s nuptials.
While the murder was glimpsed during a flash-forward, a series of flashbacks will detail everything happening to those who are knocking at death’s door, while the other residents are celebrating with the Connor-Swains in Underworld.
Explaining that the wedding wasn’t originally planned to coincide with the killing, Brooks told Radio Times and other media: “That evolved quite naturally through conferences and stuff. The original idea for the flash-forward came when I was at Euro Disney with the kids.”
“I was getting five minutes peace and quiet in the shower, and was trying to think about how to make a whodunnit feel different, and fresh, and keep people interested from the get-go, rather than waiting until we find the murder victim.
“What if we did a ‘who is it?’ rather than a ‘whodunnit?’ What if we did a flash-forward and got people hooked into the story before we revealed what the story actually was? There’s something in this.
“It obviously evolved through story conferences and as we storylined and scripted it, but that was the original nugget, to give a different flavour to quite a tried and tested formula, that got people interested in who these five people were.”
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Brooks was also keen for the wedding to be the backdrop, rather than the epicentre of the murder.
“We wanted a really joyous romance full of hope and love, and it is a beautiful wedding, but obviously we are a soap so we need that backdrop of drama and excitement – but I didn’t want to tarnish the wedding either,” she explained.
“They’re oblivious, they’ve got no idea, they’re watching fireworks and Sally shimmying out of her jacket which is one of my favourite moments. It’s a way of getting the best of both worlds.
“We’ve got these really exciting stories and a big week, preceding that is a glorious, joyful wedding about two people falling in love.”
Standalone, format-twisting episodes are becoming the norm in soapland these days – almost becoming a weekly occurrence across ITV’s serial dramas. Brooks told press that she was keen for the episodes to be stylistically different, while also being easy enough for the viewer to understand the drama.
“As complicated as the stories are, as a viewer it’s very easy to follow because [it’s] an individual story. We deliberately intended to make each ep feel like a mini movie, the hook being that we still don’t know who it is that’s been killed.
“It enables a bit of levity, especially in the Jodie episode, it’s really funny. David is really drunk and it’s very laugh out loud, side splittingly funny because Jack [P Shepherd] is amazing.
“Sally and Tim are great. There’s all sorts of shenanigans going on, we do dip back into the wedding a little bit.”
She concluded: “It gave us a chance to follow different themes and inject levity and humour, there’s great writers on all the eps who gave it that real Corrie feel, while it still felt big and bold and different to what we’ve done before.
“Oh, and there’s a great soundtrack, the opening of every episode is a banger!”
Read more:
- Coronation Street villain Theo Silverton threatens to kill again after Billy in early ITVX release
- Coronation Street airs major showdown between Theo Silverton and Carl Webster in early ITVX release
- Coronation Street airs surprise Summer Spellman scenes as she vows to protect Todd Grimshaw in early ITVX release
Coronation Street airs weeknights at 8:30pm and from 7am on ITVX.
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