Nothing hugely special really, outside of Rita's reappearance after being missing (and suspected murdered) after over 3 weeks. I can't speak of what promotion there might have been at the time, being only 3 years old then!
Though the episode technically wasn't the 3000th episode, there's some oddness with how Granada counted the episode numbers. For example in 1964 there was a strike that stopped 2 episodes getting made, and rather than make those episodes when the strike ended, which is what they usually did, they skipped them (and the storylines that were meant to be in those episodes) altogether. So there's no episodes 372 & 373, nor has there ever been! Plus there's no episode 1000 either- they promoted episode 999 as being the 1000th, so the official episode numbers skip from 999 to 1001. There may be other cases too.
Plus there's no episode 1000 either- they promoted episode 999 as being the 1000th, so the official episode numbers skip from 999 to 1001.
Surprisingly, I believe Brookside did that too. Not sure why, unless they preferred the 1000th episode to go out on a certain day of the week.
Are the hour-long specials that we’ve seen a few times in recent years, such as some of the live episodes, generally counted as one episode or two? (I assume in the cases when this appears to be due to a scheduling decision, like the episode following Aidan’s suicide, this would be counted as two episodes?)
I'm not sure, I'd to look at Corriepedia, they list the offical episode numbers and production codes. Quite often you'll notice looking at the credits there's two different writers, and sometimes directors, in these episodes which could suggest they were made as two separate episodes.
I know the first ever "hour episode" back in 1992 is considered as two episodes, though that's because it was made as two individual episodes that were combined at the last minute to "strangle Eldorado at birth". When Granada Plus showed them, they showed them in their original format of two different episodes, will be interesting to see how ITV3 handle it, if they get that far.
Back to present day, I can usually forgive the fact that in Corrieland there only seem to be three days in a week, but Wednesday was very confusing. It seemed that the scenes with Craig, Bethany and Kayla were the same day as Monday’s episode, yet it was the next day for the rest of the characters.
That confused me too, but on watching again it is in fact the next day for Craig and co. He had waited all night at A&E to be seen, and when Kayla arrived (wearing different clothes to Monday’s ep) she said she had been trying to call him “all night”. Obviously she had stayed at home and kept Bethany locked up overnight. The man jogging past her house at the very start of Wednesday’s episode is probably meant to imply it’s early morning, and the answerphone message in the first scene said her mum was coming back “this afternoon about 4”.
The confusion (for me at least) is because I originally thought Kayla had taken Craig to the health centre, but it is clearly A&E on the signs. Also, the fact it was light at the end of Monday’s ep (and the start of Wednesday’s) doesn’t make it obvious that it must have been mid to late evening when Bethany visited Kayla and was knocked unconscious.
Am i right in thinking we see the last of Alan Bradley's character on the itv 3 shows next week? Alec and Bet have turned up in Blackpool and tracked Rita down.
The man jogging past her house at the very start of Wednesday’s episode is probably meant to imply it’s early morning
I bet there's a producer's handbook somewhere where they've had to change the entry under "How to show it's morning" from "Clinking milk bottles" to "Jogger."
Corrie going to 3 times a week was great, but I think 3 episodes a week is where it should have stayed.
Is the pacing much different in the 1989 era - I imagine it is slower than now but pacier than earlier episodes.
Also what was the run time back then - even though on paper we have twice as much Corrie I would guess the runtimes have gone from about 26 min to 44 mins, so about a 70% increase.
The pacing is very different in 1989 to what it was in 1986 I think. Until around 1988/1989 each week there seemed to be the same cast in the 2 episodes and there would be a lot of shorter storylines that would be resolved within the 2 episodes. I believe they worked on one weeks worth of episodes each week and were only a week or two behind. Now they film out of sequence and can film anything between 6-8 weeks ahead of it going to air.
As for the run time, the episodes might have been slightly longer back then at around 25 mins whilst now its about 21 or 22? A bit longer but not overly so.
As James said, there seems to be a lot more location filming from 1989, in the run up to it going 3 times a week. And now we are seeing the building site a lot there is even more scenes on the street itself. In 1986 there would only be a few scenes on the street itself or even episodes where there would be no outside scenes at all. Of course there were exceptions to this like the Rovers fire episode which features long scenes on the street itself. In 1989 we have also seen a lot of new characters like the builders, the Mcdonald family, Reg and Kimberly and soon we will be seeing Des and Steph Barnes. It was very much a big change for the show I think between 1989 and 1990 and the first hint of modern Corrie I think.
