Coronation Street rejected pandemic storyline last year amid concerns it would be ‘too far-fetched’

‘Fast-forward to now and it all looks horribly prescient’

Hit ITV soap Coronation Street last year rejected a proposed pandemic storyline amid concerns that it would be “too far-fetched”.

The revelation comes as Coronation Street celebrates its 60th anniversary while the world remains disrupted by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. 

Speaking to BANG Showbiz, the series’ producer Iain MacLeod said: “About a year ago when we were talking about what we would do for our 60th anniversary, two of our writers pitched a story for a global pandemic, would you believe?”

The story would have supposedly seen a strain of bird flu break out, after originating in Tyrone Dobbs’s (Alan Halsall) pigeon loft.

Said MacLeod, Tyrone would have “taken up racing pigeons in homage to Jack, and [the pandemic] came in as some kind of form of bird flu and spread around the street.

“And the consensus around the writing room was, ‘No, it’s just too far-fetched. No one is going to buy that’,” he added. “Fast-forward to now and it all looks horribly prescient.”

Filming on Coronation Street was in fact disrupted by the pandemic, with filming abandoned earlier in the year as the UK entered its first national lockdown.

However, production on new episodes of the series has subsequently resumed, with social distancing measures enforced.