ITV’s two flagship soaps Emmerdale and Coronation Street are being prepped for a new phase, with investment in cameras and post-production, a stronger ITVX focus and experiments with micro dramas and vertical video, according to ITV’s creative director.
Iain MacLeod, ITV and ITV Studios’ Creative Director of Continuing Drama, spoke exclusively with Prolific North journalist Stephen Chapman on the This Is MediaCity podcast for a wide-ranging interview about the future of soaps.
MacLeod has spent two decades in soaps and now sits at the centre of two of the UK’s biggest continuing dramas, meaning his name is rarely far from the headlines whenever a major storyline lands or a cast change breaks.
But behind the headlines, his focus is on a question that is starting to shape every long-running format in television. How do you keep soaps feeling essential in a world where viewing habits keep shifting and competition keeps tightening?
“Top line stuff is, obviously, we’re trying to balance the need for strong linear viewing figures with the inevitability of people migrating to ITVX,” he told Stephen.
MacLeod said the move to streaming is no longer theoretical. It is already happening, and it will accelerate. The tricky bit is managing the transition, because what helps ITVX growth can also chip away at the linear audience that still matters for advertising.
“It feels like if you are solving one part of the problem, which is we want to boost our ITVX streaming numbers, then are we eating into our linear audience, which is obviously key for advertising,” he said. “So that’s a balance at the moment, but ultimately everything’s going to move to ITVX.”
He expects headlines when that shift becomes more visible, and suspects some of them will be misleading.
“I would imagine when you look at it in more detail, the audience will be the same, hopefully better, but more of it is now on ITVX,” he said. “So I’m sure you’ll see some negative headlines when the inevitable transition starts to happen more swiftly.”
A new look, without losing the DNA
If audiences are watching premium drama on Netflix, ITV cannot afford for its most famous shows to look dated by comparison. MacLeod said a major piece of work is already underway to evolve the visual feel of both soaps, including upgrading kit and post-production infrastructure.
“We’re in the midst of a big piece of work around evolving what they both look like,” he said. “I want there to be a somewhat consistent visual feel between the soaps so you sort of know when you turn on Emmerdale or turn on Corrie that it’s an ITV [show], without homogenising it too much.”
He also pointed to potential changes beyond HD. “Yes, there might be maybe some news around shifting from HD slightly upwards in terms of the resolution that we’re using,” he said. “What we don’t want is to be left behind.”
For MacLeod, modernising does not mean cutting ties with what made the shows matter in the first place. Coronation Street’s legacy still sits in Tony Warren’s original vision, and MacLeod says it remains a reference point.
“We always want to maintain as much of Tony Warren’s Corrie DNA as we can,” he said. “Essentially, it’s strong women, feckless men, working class lives, northern humour, and there has to be a place for that in Coronation Street.”
The balance, he argues, is that character-led storytelling still needs bigger hooks than it did decades ago, because viewers now have endless alternatives.
“The competition is higher, and you have to be a little bit more arm twisty with your storytelling to make people come and watch,” he said.
Micro dramas and vertical video
Alongside the main shows, MacLeod confirmed ITV is exploring parallel formats designed to reach younger audiences without chasing them so hard it becomes transparent.
“We’re also, as you would imagine, talking about things like micro dramas, vertical dramas,” he said. “Is there any other parallel IP we can generate with a different set of characters that feeds into and out of the main show that will, we hope, engage a slightly younger audience.”
He stressed the team is still working out what is realistic, including whether a traditional 23-minute episode can be meaningfully compressed.
“The other one is, can we boil our 23 minute episodes down into a micro drama,” he said. “That’s proving more difficult, because a lot goes on in the soaps.”
Even so, he sees experimentation as essential, so long as it is handled carefully.
“If you go chasing after 18 year old viewers, firstly, the 18 year olds won’t want it anyway, because they’ll smell that you’re trying too hard,” he said. “And secondly, everyone else that might commonly have watched the show will drift away.”
CorrieDale and the limits of the crossover
MacLeod also spoke about CorrieDale, the Coronation Street and Emmerdale crossover that pulled the two worlds together and delivered a big audience by today’s standards.
“It ended up settling at about 5.9 million, which in this day and age is pretty good,” he said.
The success has led to the obvious question about whether it could become a repeatable event. MacLeod’s view is that it worked because it felt like a one-off, and repeating it risks diminishing returns.
“My fear is a lot of the joy of the first iteration was that you’d never seen it before,” he said. “I just don’t know that if you did it again, firstly, there wouldn’t be the same level of excitement because you’ve seen it before.”
He added: “Sometimes one and done is great.”
Why soaps still matter in a crowded market
For MacLeod, the argument for soaps comes back to pace. It is the same immediacy that drew him in from commercial radio and journalism, and it is still what keeps him there.
“I like the immediacy of it,” he said. “It’s exciting, fast-paced and every single day you are making television.”
He is also blunt about the false hierarchy that still exists in parts of the industry.
“If you want to make drama and see it on the television regularly, come and work on a soap,” he said. “If you want to spend three years in development hell trying to make your passion project, get off the ground and end up crying because no one wants to commission it, go and do something else.”
That pace shapes talent too. MacLeod argues the industry still underestimates how transferable soap skills are, especially behind the camera.
“If anybody is listening out there, if you want someone that can shoot your schedule twice over and make a brilliant [show], hire yourself a soap director,” he said. “There’s lots of them.”
One last easter egg
As soaps look to the future, MacLeod’s final tease was a small one, but it captures what long-running drama does best. It takes everyday life, then nudges it into story.
His daughter, he told Chapman, has invented a new word as a way to avoid swearing when someone winds her up.
“She made up a word,” he said. “She’s like, Daddy, I don’t like to swear, because it’s rude, but sometimes somebody annoys me a lot, so I just call them a clerk.”
Then came the inevitable question.
“She went, can you get that in Coronation Street,” MacLeod said. “Well, maybe, yeah, maybe. So watch this space. There might be a clerk coming to a screen near you soon.”
