Coronation Street and Emmerdale will collide in a crossover episode that launches a scaled-back schedule.

The worlds of TV soaps Coronation Street and Emmerdale will collide – literally – in an explosive crossover episode on Monday, kicking off a revamped but reduced schedule for the shows.

Characters from both soaps will come face-to-face for the first time in the one-off Corriedale, which executive producer Iain MacLeod jokes is “like the Marvel multiverse assembly.”.

When MacLeod took over both long-running shows two years ago, he started considering mixing the ITV soap universes, perhaps by sending a character or two on holiday across the Pennines.

“And then gradually you think, if you’re going to do it, why not go huge? This is the approach we’ve chosen to take, he says.

In soap terms, “going huge” means staging a spectacular and slightly preposterous stunt in an attempt to grab viewers’ attention.

On a dark road on a winter’s night, circumstances conspire to bring together characters from both Coronation Street’s Manchester setting and Emmerdale’s West Yorkshire home. Events unfold rapidly.

“As a soap fan, witnessing the collision of these two worlds is a unique opportunity,” MacLeod continues. “It’s so exciting.

“I think fans of both shows will enjoy the opportunity, just for this hour, to see what it’s like if your favourite character from over here interacts with your favourite character from over there.”

The meeting of the TV tribes had to happen on neutral territory, and MacLeod says he got the idea for the storyline from his own journeys back and forth between Manchester and Leeds.

“Anyone that’s had the misfortune of making that journey with any frequency will know it’s fraught with delays and accidents and road closures and extreme weather events,” he says.

“So partly it was inspired by my loathing of that commute and having spent a long time embroiled in some kind of chaos on that transpennine arterial connection between the two cities that host our soaps.

“I was thinking, hmm, I wonder if I can turn my traumatic work journeys into something creative.”

For the actors, filming the special was a chance to get to know their counterparts.

“We had a lot of time to spend together,” says Joe-Warren Plant, who plays Emmerdale’s Jacob Gallagher. “There were three weeks of night shoots, and that was quite intense for the cast and the crew.

“We had a lot of time off set as well whilst we were waiting for the big set-ups and explosions. We had fun in each other’s trailers and dressing rooms.

There was “a little bit of competitive rivalry” during the build-up, he says, “but then as soon as we got on set, all of that went away.”

“There’s never, like, beef – but you obviously want to fly the flag for your side. But it’s been absolutely wonderful. Everybody from Corrie has been so warm and welcoming.”

The all-action one-hour episode required 14 all-night filming sessions.

“They were really quite pleasant considering we were working from six at night until six in the morning,” insists Julia Goulding, aka the pregnant Shona Platt from Coronation Street.

It was wonderful being with the Emmerdale lot.

“It was a tremendous team effort. It was great being with the Emmerdale lot. I actually had a really nice time.”

Shona encounters trouble en route from the wedding of Corrie’s Debbie and Ronnie, and the only downside to the night shoots was spending so long in a pregnancy suit and the same dress, Goulding says.

“I had a frock on because I was coming back from the wedding. So it was a bit uncomfortable.

“While others wore trainers and jeans, I stood out in my sparkly boots and frock, showcasing my pregnancy bump.”

A few actors have tasted life on both sides of the soap divide.

They include Chris Bisson, who played Vikram Desai in Coronation Street from 1999 to 2002 and has been Jai Sharma in Emmerdale since 2009.

That caused a conundrum for producers when the two shows came together.

“I was thrilled to be part of this,” Bisson says. “I knew there was potentially a bit of an issue with me having played a character in both the soaps.

“I phoned the boss and said, ‘Please, let me be in it! The punters need to see Steve McDonald think he saw Vikram!'”

ITV is introducing a “power hour” where the two soaps will separate once more after Corriedale, with Emmerdale airing at 8pm and Corrie at 8.30pm every weeknight, both of which can be streamed from 7am on ITVX.

“We’re setting a new routine, and actually I think it’s better for the soaps,” Bisson believes.

“I think we can get back to telling stories in the way that we used to tell them, because we’ve been forced into always trying to do a special double episode on a Thursday. But, of course, we did it every Thursday, so it wasn’t special any more.

“So let’s play the genre in the way that people want it played, which involves telling great and relevant stories, while maintaining its identity as modern repertory theatre.”

Corriedale is the latest attempt to shore up the shows after years of declining ratings, according to the Sun’s soaps editor Carl Greenwood.

“They aim to relaunch the shows between 8 and 9pm, but they require a significant impact to achieve this, as the soaps have lost millions of viewers in recent years,” Carl Greenwood explains.

Corrie got about 4.3 million viewers per episode and Emmerdale attracted 3.8 million in 2025 – both down by about a third over the past 10 years.

And after increasing their episode numbers over the decades, the soaps are now being scaled back for the first time. Corrie and Emmerdale will be on air for five hours per week in total instead of six.

“I think it was inevitable. There was no way they could sustain the hours that they were putting out in the episodes with the declining viewers,” Greenwood says.

Not only have they trimmed their episodes, but Hollyoaks and Casualty have also done so, and Doctors and Neighbours have completely ceased operations.

“I don’t think we’re going to see soaps gone,” Greenwood adds. “But I don’t think we’re going to see as much of them going forward.”

The airtime has been reduced mainly because daily half-hour episodes have the benefit of being in a reliable slot and are in “a more consumable length and format,” MacLeod says.

It will also have “a really positive effect on the way we tell stories,” he explains. “It’ll allow them to be a little bit pacier. The plot points can move on more quickly day-to-day, rather than having to play it over an hour.”

The budgets have been cut, though – but ITV hasn’t said how much by.

More than 70 staff and crew jobs have been lost, almost all through voluntary redundancies, MacLeod says, meaning there have been some “difficult times” behind the scenes.

“We’ve lost a lot of very long-standing members of staff. It’s been a tricky year in that respect,” he says.

However, he believes that we will start 2026 in excellent health.