It’s a new year for Coronation Street and a bit of a milestone one – by December, the iconic British institution will be a mammoth 60 years of age so we decided to get the gossip from the man who will be pulling the strings of the next 12 months which will be pivotal for the show and its fans.

Iain MacLeod, formerly Emmerdale’s boss, has previously worked on Corrie and it’s a show very dear to him. When Metro.co.uk sat down for an extended chat, he was very open about some of the exciting plans in store and his passion for the storylines and the characters as well as the team was evident.



Here is what he revealed:

On David and Shona’s journey:

‘The David/Shona story is very big. The character of David can pretty much sustain any kind of story, whether it be comedy or tragedy, and this is probably slightly more towards the latter category. This is going to be very big, not just in January, but all the way through to next year. The events of Christmas will provide David and Shona with the biggest test of their relationship – and that’s not an exaggeration. If you consider what they have been through already, that is no small statement.’


On the end of Jade:

‘Soaps are all about balance of tone, so we’ve got a very serious David story but playing against that we have a slightly more heightened, dare I say ‘campy story’ with the brilliant bonkers Jade and her secret assault on the Dobbs household. It’s just fabulous and exciting, a really high-octane ending and I think it will probably subvert people’s expectations about what they think about Jade, which is really exciting and interesting.’

On Tracy and Steve’s future:

‘I love those two, I think they are the Jack and Vera for the 21st Century. I think they’ll be together in 20 years time, but there is a fundamental problem at the root of all this and that is, when they embarked on their most recent reincarnation, Steve didn’t really want to marry her, he kind of stumbled into all of that and it kind of happened by accident. At the back of Tracy’s mind is this terrible suspicion that she loves Steve more than he loves her. So the calamity that befalls them at New Year will stem for all of that, and turn into a really nice heartfelt story where Steve is forced to declare himself and realise that he does love Tracy and their relationship will be all the stronger for it.’

On Daniel’s future and Bethany’s exit:

‘What we wanted to make sure once Katie had left the show was that we didn’t have nothing for Rob Mallard to be doing. So, what we have is at first a slow-burn story that gradually ramps up in intensity where Daniel in his efforts to move on from Sinead sort of takes her edict that he should be happy. I’m sure you’ll remember the line where she said, “Don’t forget about me, but do forget about me”.

‘He sort of gets his head around all of that and ends up accelerating into a romantic entanglement with Bethany which I think we will all know relatively early on is going to end in tears for both of them. That’s a really good story for Rob and really showcases his abilities, gives Bethany and Lucy Fallon something entirely new to do, this doomed romance, so that’s going to be really big over the first 3-4 months or so.’



On a huge spring storyline:

‘All of these threads are building towards the early spring time and there is a huge new story which I can’t say too much more about at this stage if you’ll forgive me for being cryptic but having re-established Steve and Tracy’s relationship on its strongest footing, something will happen that probably has the most far-reaching impact of any story we’ve done since I’ve been on the show, and I include both stints, where something horrifically difficult and challenging will happen that draws in 3-4 different clans on the Street and forces them to deal with the hardest thing anyone would ever had to deal with. That will begin on screen, you might not know what it is at first, around March/April, and that will play out over the spring and into the summer.’

On Gary and Britain’s Got Talent week:

‘We can’t forget the on-going trajectory of Gary Windass and his return to his genetic destiny as a kind of slightly dodgy scowl, and that has a really interesting chapter at the start of the new year. Having ridden the storm that ensures after Christmas, he finds himself in a relatively stable and happy place with Maria, and then something incredibly difficult happens that throws it up in the air, and meanwhile, while the focus is over here on his new family and Maria, Adam Barlow is secretly conspiring against him and will threaten to lead Adam and therefore the authorities to Rick’s final resting place.

‘Whether that will actually happen or not is still to be seen but ultimately that will precipitate a big explosive story around the time we traditionally do our Britain’s Got Talent strip week. We’re aware that Rick’s body is resting over there, and we are resisting the urge to dig it up as it feels like everyone is expecting us to. So, I hope we’re playing in a good way with the audience’s expectations around that.’


On Peter and Carla:

‘There is quite a lot for them in the new year, most of which is slightly later in the year. First we all felt that we wanted to see Carla regain her status as Queen of the cobbles. After the mental health story we told I felt like we had to have a period where she looked after herself rather than ran a business like the kind of ball-breaking go-getter we know that she can be, and all of that has given me an appetite to see her get back in the saddle, so we’ll see her regain some of her former status.

‘We will also discover something about her lost weekend where she went missing during her mental health story that we haven’t known yet, which will provide a bump in the road for her and Peter. And ultimately they will navigate that because he loves her and she loves him and this thing occurred at a time where she wasn’t in possession of her mental health. So he forgives her, but it plants this tiny little seed of friction between them. Ultimately there is no prospect of them splitting up in the foreseeable. I tend to feel that they are Burton and Taylor.

‘Will they be together in ten years’ time? Who knows? They’re in one of their passionate “I will defend them to the death” phases of their relationship, and I like them like that. So yeah, the story I’m alluding to will kick off on-screen I think in April where a ghost from Carla’s past comes back and threatens to upset the applecart. But they will survive that.’


On Liz’s exit:

Oh, I’m gutted. It’s a long way off yet, but the idea is that it’s a result of this story I’m hinting at for Steve and Tracy and the big clans at war story we are telling. It will arise from that and, at the moment – and again it’s only in its embryonic stages – the idea is that Liz is attempting to do something heroic for her son that will probably go slightly wrong in a way that it will corrupt her relationship with Steve and she’ll have some making up to do but ultimately determine that the best place for her is not in Weatherfield because she and Steve are upsetting each other.

‘But we want it to be big and heroic and befitting of a character of that long-standing in the show and she’s a tough woman Liz McDonald so we wanted to do something that was reflective of that rather than anything where she sort of goes out on a low ebb. It’s still in the planning stages but a lot about of what Bev said in her interview about she’s going out with a bang and we’re certainly not killing her off, all of that is true. But in terms of the detail of it, TBC, but it will be some heroic effort to save Steve from the nightmare in which he finds himself.’

On the 60th anniversary:

‘There’s not a lot at this point because of reasons of secrecy so forgive me for being cryptic. It’s an astonishing landmark, not only that but at the start of the year we have our 10,000th episode that we are intending to mark with something that is Corrie to the core, I think is fair to say. So, we’re thinking the 10,000th might be “classic Corrie” which is laconic, comedic and character driven vibe. And the 60th is likely to be something much more explosive.

‘We’ve thought long and hard about what we want from the 60th, and actually the expectation from the audience now is that it is something – not necessarily death and destruction – but there is a spectacle attached to it. There’s a risk in going spectacular and some people wishing you’d done something a bit more Sheila Delaney, but I think that risk is lower than going full-out Shelia Delaney than disappointing all the people who wanted something spectacular. I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive by the way so the idea would be that we have the spectacle and the character driven stuff within that spectacle as we did in the 50th I guess.’

On the pressure of running Corrie’s 60th year:

‘I put pressure on myself because I love the show and want it to be great, really. But nobody is standing over my shoulder with a riding crop, encouraging me to go faster and harder and do more. ITV, I’m lucky to say are very collaborative and they trust the writers, therefore we have quite a lot of free reign with what we want to do. The pressure is there because we want it to be good and the eyes of the TV world will be on it but equally I’m surrounded by a talented bunch of people who have done this for longer than I have been out of short trousers and I trust them implicitly to work with me and deliver something novel.

‘That’s what we want as well. I fear there is a risk the audience will go “well what hasn’t been done in a anniversary week” and Hollyoaks does big spectacular things every other Tuesday, so again have all the chips been spent already in terms of the drama you can find for those big weeks? Well, we think not actually. We have some fairly novel, fairly left-field ideas that we are exploring at the moment so it should be exciting.

On other soap characters he’d love to have in Corrie:

‘The one that has the most enduring popularity across any soap – and it doesn’t matter what they do or who they do it to – is Cain Dingle. For example, Gary’s coronation as tough guy/villain, seeing him go up against Cain would be interesting. There are characters across all the shows that I love. Purely I think because she’s a fantastic actor and drawn this incredibly complex character that I had some hand in steering at various times, I love Sienna Blake off Hollyoaks.

‘Partly because Anna Passey is an incredible talent, and partly I think because Sienna could start a crisis in an empty room. She was very useful story-wise because you could have her do anything, so I think having her get off the Weatherfield wayfarer and have her cause some kind of chaos and be good fun. And just in the spirit of mentioning all the soaps, who would turn down Phil Mitchell? I think Steve McFadden is an incredibly good and often underrated actor and has done really brilliant hard-hitting serious stuff but is also another alpha male who would threaten to upset the applecart.’

On the need for villains:

‘I think Bryan Kirkwood is a very shrewd observer of the workings of soap, when I worked with him on Hollyoaks I remember him saying, we’ve got seven villains, and I remember thinking, seven villains – are you out of your mind? How is that going to sustain, it’s just not going to work? But actually if they all have different types of villainy going on and they are not treading on each other’s toes, you need antagonists, that’s where the stories come from. You need someone that can, in a self-serving way, go ooh they’ve left their wallet on the table, I’ll just take that. You need characters who are just like that and slightly wired wrong, so I’m thinking mostly of Sienna when I say that.

‘But there is also a pathos to those characters as well. Phil has his vulnerabilities and addiction issues and he has played some fantastic emotional stories, but then on the other side he can be that antagonist and Cain is much the same. He has done some horrendous things over the years but he is fiercely loyal to his family and has a new level of vulnerability to him since his mum came into the picture and we’ve seen almost childlike elements of his character there so yeah I like sort of damaged but ultimately complicated and interesting characters really. That’s the business of drama I suppose.’

On stylised episodes:

‘Part of what we might be doing for the 60th will have elements of that. I tend to feel that you have to be a bit more cautious on Corrie than you do on Emmerdale, which has historically gone a bit more out-there and left-field than Corrie has. Nothing specific and it has to be story-driven, I guess. If I sat down and I said I really want to do an episode where it is entirely told from the point of view of somebody with profound vision impairment, how do we get there? It would feel a bit shoe-horned.

‘Whereas if the story suggested that, you tend to get a feeling for it early in the evolution of a story you think there is an opportunity here to do something really insightful is great, but to sit here and try and force that, I think the audience will see it for what it is. There’s an element of something a little bit genre-bending for the 60th in terms of what we are planning but nothing else at this point that is stylised like the Carla episode.’

On whether fan reactions on Twitter influences him:

‘You can’t please all the people all the time. I dip in and out of it and there is a risk with social media engagement that you selectively remember only the negative and it can start to become a bit depressing, I guess. If you isolate yourself from that and don’t pay attention or don’t care about what the audience want it’s a little bit arrogant firstly and secondly you are denying yourself an opportunity of having a barometer of what you are doing.

‘The viewing figures are obviously important but equally you want people to enjoy watching it and like watching it, not just because they feel they have to. To be honest I engage with it less than I used to, only because after soap producing for a few years now, you bank all the negative stuff and so cumatively after a while it can start to become exhausting. But listen, I’m a fan and therefore it’s madness to try and not listen to what the fans say and there would have been a time and there will be again as and when I move out of the genre of soap where I’ll be a fan on Twitter rowing with the other fans about what I like and what I don’t.

‘At the moment I suppose you just have to trust your instincts and trust the writers instincts and keep the clarity of vision, because if you try to please all the people all the time it can end up in a bit of a muddle.’

MORE: 10 soap spoilers this week: EastEnders stalker, Coronation Street death fears, Emmerdale burglary, Hollyoaks Later

MORE: Coronation Street spoilers: Jade Rowan’s revenge destroys Fiz Stape tonight

Advertisement Advertisement