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Get ready for some huge news.
Get ready for some huge news.

Pop CultureMay 10, 2018

Coronation Street is about to quantum leap into the present day

Get ready for some huge news.
Get ready for some huge news.

There’s some huge Coronation Street news: New Zealand is in for a hardcore catch up. A shaken Tara Ward explains what’s happening.

Hold the phone, stop the runaway tram, throw your wobbly trifle at the wall. Mark this day down in television history, for it’s the day that TVNZ made an announcement that will make Coronation Street fans cry happy tears of pure Newton and Ridley lager.

Yesterday, we faced an 18-month gap between Coro episodes screening in the UK and New Zealand, possibly because ITV sends us the episodes on one of Jack Duckworth’s pigeons. Three nights every week, we stared into a dark Coronation Street abyss where everything was old news, fake news, where the storylines were as outdated as Norris’s attitude to mobile phones.

But today, the sun came out. From June, TVNZ will screen Coro episodes one week after the UK. One week!  It’s news as surprising as Dev and Deidre’s Christmas Day hook up, but way less nauseating.

No longer will fans be forced to trawl through the darkest corners of the internet for our latest Coro fix, or hide from spoilers like we’re a dead body buried under Gail Platt’s double bed. Praise be to the gods of Weatherfield, because that cruel lag in episodes is about to disappear quicker than Deirdre did after she visited Bev and died in the garden.

Spectacular, spectacular, no words in the vernacular can express the joy running through my cold, Carla Connor-esque veins. We’ve waited long enough, so let’s leap into Mary’s campervan like it’s some sort of oversized Mancurian DeLorean and launch ourselves into the future.

Gird your loins, Coro’s about to get real.

To cover all the important storylines that take place during the 18-month gap, TVNZ 1 will screen a special two-hour special on Sunday June 10. This will be one ginormous, glorious spoiler, so look away now if you don’t want to know the result.

From Monday June 11, we’ll get the latest episodes of Coronation Street 2018. Is that choirs of angels I hear? These episodes will be hotter than the hottest of Betty’s hotpots. Gail’s turtleneck jerseys will be 100% current season, Roy’s rolls will be soft and fresh, and Tracey’s insults will burn straight to our thermal core.

But it gets better. For the week beginning June 11, Coronation Street 2018 is on every night. Every. Single. Night. For one whole week, we can bask in the glow of up to date television. Enjoy it while it lasts, because Coro 2018 will return to its regular Wednesday – Friday timeslot the following week.

If you fancy yourself as some sort of Deirdre Barlow ghost (and who doesn’t AMIRITE) who haunts both the past and the future, then you can go John Stape-level crazy and watch ALL of Coro on TVNZ OnDemand. Choose a year, choose a storyline, choose a Phelan-related nightmare. The currently airing 2016/17 episodes (helpfully named Coronation Street Catch-up) will still screen every weekday afternoon.

Got it? We’re about to enter the Coronation Street twilight zone, where the cobbled lines between the past, present and future are blurred beyond our wildest dreams. We’ll probably end up more confused than Sally trying to decide which husband she wants to marry, but when has too much Coro ever been a bad thing?

Never, I tell you. NEVER.


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