CORONATION Street will reference social distancing when it begins filming new episodes again, Colson Smith has said.
The actor – who plays policeman Craig Tinker in the ITV soap – said the entire team can't wait to get back filming after the shutdown went into effect last month.
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Speaking on Good Morning Britain today he said: "We’re all really looking forward to reading the scripts.
"And reading how we show the social distancing guidelines, and how we show what we’ve missed.
"It’s an exciting time. We’ve got a great team of writers behind us and I’m sure they’re all working away at the moment so that when we come back we’ve got everything right and we’re ready."
However, the pandemic and the effects won't be seen on screen for months as scriptwriters didn't include anything about it before shut down.
An insider told The Sun 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."
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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.
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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.
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