Coronation Street

It depends if you include cast who aren't full time, like Michelle Connor's mother who was originally played by Sorcha Cusack and later recast.

Of course, Bruce Jones (Les) was suspended and later sacked due to revealing planned storylines to a journalist in a pub whilst drunk I believe.

It's a bit of a tricky situation with Sharif being involved in what is going to be a major storyline but I guess he'll disappear and they'll play it out with his wife Yasmeen and Sonia having a few fights on the street to comic effect for a few months!

I remember how Home and Away (and I would assume Neighbours) weren't adverse to replacing actors overnight, even for short periods. They'd just start the episode with a caption saying that the actor playing the character had changed and no-one batted an eyelid.

I'm surprised it's never been done over here. There would only be outcry and faux confusion online for one or two episodes and it would certainly be less detrimental to the soaps than the often daft and unrealistic stories they have to give when characters have suddenly been written out in the past.

The only recent British broadcasting example I can think of temporary re-casting wasn't even on telly - it was an episode of Cabin Pressure, the Radio 4 sitcom, when Benedict Cumberbatch had a sore throat and was replaced for one episode by Tom Goodman-Hill, who is enough of a sound-a-like not to bother doing an impression, but he had the character down to a T anyway.

Going back a bit, Frazer Hines was replaced as Jamie for one episode of Doctor Who in the 60s while he was ill. It being science fiction (and a particularly surreal story), they were able to come up with a passable but weird in-universe explanation for his change of face. They did a similar thing (a mind swap, in this case) on The Prisoner to give Patrick McGoohan some time off.

I spent a while trying to work out recently if they'd used Rebecca's recent shrugging off of her Goth look to replace the actress on Eastenders ... but they didn't. Could've got away with it...

They'll just mention in passing that he's had to go abroad because great uncle somebody is ill. He'll then decide not to return to the UK for some throwaway paper thin reason, and that'll be that.

Of course they did recast Peter and Tracey but after a long time off screen, and both characters were fairly minor up to that point. Tracy had only gone upstairs to play her tapes for most of the previous actresses tenure.

An opportunity for soaps first face transplant story.


Hollyoaks have done a couple of practically overnight recastings over the last few years without the character leaving with Claire Devine a few years ago and Holly Cunningham more recently.

Or he could disappear with the woman he's been having a 7 year affair with which would seem plausible.

Do a Sons a daughters, and plant a Wheelchair bomb and then disappear to have plastic surgery on a new face.

It was quite ironic that Sharif happened to be featured in the first scene tonight, and appeared more in an episode than most he's been in before!

Mentioning Frazer Hines, that links to Dolly Skilbeck in Emmerdale Farm back in the late 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Skilbeck

I know, seemed like he was in 50% of it. Very unfortunate timing for the show. I wonder if they've started trying to edit any of the rest of this week's episodes.

I can't see him doing a bunk with his mistress - that'd be out of character the way it's been written - but now he can disappear with Dev's money instead!

I thought that myself. He had the opinions lines.

The actor has apologised for using language on social media but not for his opninions. All in all we are all entitled to our own opninions but as someone posted earlier; in this situation actors have been warned to be careful about what they say.

It is a great shame. I bet he genuinely is sorry for what he did but as someone else said; best not to put it on in the first place and that goes for anybody posting anything including this forum.

Sharon Marshall said on This Morning they will begin cutting his screen-time down from what they have filmed already. Like it has been said numerous times, it is unfortunate it has happened now when his big storyline has just got underway.