Search icon

Entertainment

12th Oct 2021

Corrie, Emmerdale and EastEnders to air first ever crossover storyline

Charlie Herbert

British soaps to be involved in major crossover episode addressing climate change

Casualty, Doctors, Holby City and Hollyoaks are also involved.

Coronation Street, EastEnders and Emmerdale are going to be joining forces with other major soaps for a first-ever crossover episode.

The story will be focused on climate change and will begin airing on November 1.

Soap expert Sharon Marshall appeared on This Morning to announce the news, describing it as “amazing.”

She said: “It’s the first time it’s ever been done. In November, we’re going to be having the world’s first soap crossover.

“Now for the first time, all five British soaps – and our continuing dramas – they’re all going to come together and tell the same story at the same time. That story is going to be climate change.”

The crossover project will also involve medical soaps Casualty, Doctors and Holby City, along with Channel 4’s Hollyoaks.

Marshall continued: “All of these people have been talking about it in secret for months and months to make this work and what they’re each going to do is film a scene, have a reference that is going to cover a different aspect of climate change and – this is the fun bit – a soap first.

“You’re going to see all the programmes do a nod to the other and characters will start popping up from one soap in another soap on screen. That has never been done before.”

The crossovers will involved characters in the soaps openly discussing people from the other programmes.

Casualty will be mentioned in the iconic Woolpack, a social media video featuring two of Emmerdale’s residents will be shown to Corrie characters, and a social media clip from Weatherfield will be discussed in the Queen Vic.

The Mirror reports that the idea was that of Jane Hudson, the executive producer on Emmerdale, and she had been in contact with other soap producers ever since.

She said: “Never before have all five soaps and both continuing dramas come together and united in telling one story. And we certainly haven’t seen characters pop up in other shows before. This is a real treat for our audience, whilst also allowing us to get across a very important message.”

BBC Studios’ Head of Continuing Drama Kate Oates said: “I’m thrilled that our soaps and serial dramas have all come together to help highlight the issue of climate change amongst our millions of viewers. We’re grateful to the teams that made this happen, and hugely look forward to seeing the talent from our own shows popping up in other iconic programmes.”

Hollyoaks boss Lucy Allan added: “We know how important climate change and environmental issues are to our youthful audience, and to all soap viewers. It has been great to work together on an engaging way to, hopefully, inspire conversations about issues that are so important.”