As Coronation Street gears up for Super Soap Week, it has an awful lot of surprises in store for its viewers, as the end of dastardly villain Stephen Reid (Todd Boyce) grows ever closer.
Stephen has terrorised Coronation Street for almost 18 months, with his crimes going largely unnoticed until recently.
Now, the rug is oh-so-close to being pulled out from underneath him, and we can’t wait to see how that will unfold.
One thing that we can reveal is that the whole community will play a part in bringing Stephen down, as show boss Iain MacLeod has teased.
‘That’s what continuing drama and soap does best. It’s about communities, isn’t it? It’s not just as simple as Stephen’s done some bad stuff, it has ripple effects across the whole street and that’s just a lot more fun to watch really, otherwise it doesn’t feel like a soap anymore.
‘So, we were very keen to explore all the ways in which Stephen’s bad behaviour, to euphemistically describe it – it’s probably gone further than bad behaviour by now – but we wanted to explore all the people he’s impacted from Carla to Peter to Audrey, indirectly to Sarah who’s trusted this guy.
‘He’s just had all these far-reaching influences on all these characters and we just loved the idea of all these chickens coming home to roost in this big week.’
However, catching a killer is no straight-froward feat, and there will certainly be twists ahead that none of us are expecting, as was confirmed during a special screening of the huge episodes.
‘Somebody just said it’s so packed full of twists,’ Iain said, ‘and we’ve obviously just watched the last hour and a half of the week, but the week as a whole, you just don’t know which way to turn.
‘It’s incredibly exciting, the performances are great. I think the director David Kester has done a brilliant job and the lighting team have done a brilliant job of making it look really special and quite cinematic, while still being very Coronation Street.’
While everyone is looking forward to seeing what will become of Stephen, you’ll be pleased to know that the events of Super Soap Week will cause collateral damage for a number of characters, and see far-reaching consequences filter out into the weeks and months beyond.
‘The consequences inevitably of crimes of this scale are going to be huge,’ Iain teased, ‘so it’s going to be an exciting few months on Coronation Street.’
