Coronation Street's latest Yasmeen twist is a result of COVID changes
When lockdown shut soaps down, storylines had to be changed.
While we are about to see what a post-lockdown world looks like in Coronation Street, we are also about to witness the big story that was forced to be changed when producers realised they would not be able to complete it as planned under new social distancing guidelines.
Whilst we all suspected it would be Yasmeen's trial considering they were in the middle of filming it when lockdown began back in March, and according to the Daily Star, it was indeed the one they were referring to and it seems the workaround led to another cruel blow for an already emotionally exhausted Yasmeen Nazir (Shelley king).
Scenes next week will show that, as the trial is about to begin, Yasmeen will fall to the floor from a suspected heart attack in front of her worried lawyer, Imran Habeeb (Charlie De Melo). It turns out that, should the world have remained pandemic free, this likely would never have happened at all.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press earlier this year, showrunner Iain McLeod said of the story: "We had one particularly big storyline which was due to climax in the finals week of Britain's Got Talent. We normally do a big spectacular story climax and that proved to not be possible this time. So rather than do a half-cooked version of it, because it required a location, we elected to push the big centrepiece, the drama of that week and do it later in the year at a time we can do it full-beam rather than a compromised version."
What is unclear is whether new character Elaine (Paula Wilcox) was always intended to be part of the plan. We assume that given how vital an ex of Geoff Metcalfe's (Ian Bartholomew) would be to Yasmeen, particularly one that has been through similar things, that she was always set to feature- but this may be one of many mysteries we never get an answer to.
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Yasmeen is taken to hospital next week, which is around the same time that Elaine is spotted keeping a close eye on Geoff as he readies himself for court. It looks as though we are heading for the final stage of this story and fingers crossed that Geoff Metcalfe gets his comeuppance before too long.
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