Emmerdale

It really has revealed how much the British love their soaps and how much they are entrenched into their lives in 2020.

Or is that broadcasters can't afford to let anyone go cold turkey?

I'm glad that the soaps have been culled back due to the pandemic. Emmerdale and Corrie were in particular shown far too much across the weekdays before. Even EastEnders at 4 nights a week is dull and boring now.

I wonder if the broadcasters will realise that putting all their eggs in one basket didn't work out well for them. Concentrating 6 1/2 hrs a week on primetime on ITV on two productions and two production sites hasn't really proved resilient.

It's not like having three soaps on ITV instead of two, as they did in the early 2000s, would've helped. The third soap would've been Crossroads, which being set in a hotel would've been severely disrupted. They'd have been forced off air until the tourism industry reopened, as most of the characters would've been furloughed!

I know many don’t want to see as many episodes of the soaps, but suggesting they didn’t show as many just in case there was a global pandemic that forced production to be suspended and might have resulted in a big hole in the schedules, is a bit of a stretch.

It’s not like the filming of whatever the alternative programming would have been, wouldn’t also have even effected.

With regards to Crossroads, that was a daytime soap during its remake in 2001-03 so I don't think that had any relevance to Corrie and Emmerdale increasing episodes. Corrie was already starting to add a 5th episode and Emmerdale was already 5 a week when Crossroads was on. Two totally different times of the day with a difference in audience. Crossroads actually reduced their episodes from 5 to 4 during 2001 by dropping the Friday episode. They then took it off air for a few months and brought it back for another 5 months in 2003 before axing it forever. They also reduced the episodes during its original run in the 70s and 80s so they can reduce the episodes if they feel they need to. ITV have given up on soaps in daytime it seems as they didn't work. They had a successful imported soap in Home and Away and when that was lost to Channel 5 they never had a successful daytime soap despite trying a few times like with Crossroads and having a daytime version of their primetime hit The Royal set in present day.

I just know there will be lots of posts and articles across the internet/newspapers when the post lockdown filmed episodes air! I hope people can be intelligent enough to realise they are doing everything to keep the show on air and any differences such as a change in a characters appearance should be overlooked given the circumstances. I can see the headlines now though!

A lot of hairstyle can be being blamed on lockdown anyway like Danny Miller shaved his head and that will be written into the lockdown 2 hander with Aaron and Cain.

Is it me or is this lockdown episode quite dark?

Expected it to be a bit lighter (though Sam's shopping outfit was a LOL moment). It is well done though.

Sam and Lydia not some of my favourites but I don't mind them, Lydia has grown on me as a character, hated her at first. I thought it was a decent episode and it brought in the storyline of Lydia going for the test to see if she has Huntington's plus I liked some of the references to Covid 19 e.g the clap for carers, people going out for exercise, being furloughed etc I liked how it wasn't all set on the one day.

I am looking forward to Wednesday featuring my favourite Aaron (with Cain.)

It was felt like an episode of Inside 9, where you want to tune out because you’re a bit bored but you know once the twist comes it’ll have been worth the wait and the best bit of TV you’ve ever seen, until the next episode that is.

Probably not really a fair comparison, it was a perfectly watchable 20 or so minutes of soap considering the restrictions.

The only thing which didn't really ring true was the kid being stuck on his school trip as in reality they'd have been sent home. Surely they could have just had him upstairs listening to some tapes.

The social distancing was a bit obvious too but didn't distract from the script - indeed they should have worked it in with Sam being supposedly so paranoid.