Coronation Street to air six times a week from the autumn

Coronation Street will air in fans' homes six times a week from the autumn.

The ITV soap currently runs five episodes a week across three days - two on Mondays and Fridays, and one on Wednesdays - but will gain an extra instalment later in the year, series producer Kate Oates has said.

She told The Sun: "There has to be loads of story going on as we go to six episodes in the autumn - there will be lots of different character groups and tones of stories.

"The idea is that by the time we come to the six episodes, we will have loads going on and lots for the audience to talk about - the whole fabric will be very rich.

"We have a start date in the ether but it's not completely confirmed yet."

Oates took over as the soap's boss in 2016, joining from ITV's Emmerdale to replace Stuart Blackburn in the top job on the cobbles.

She said that having run the same six-episode schedule at Emmerdale, she had no worries about how the cast and crew would cope.

Oates said: "It will be absolutely fine. I have always been cool about this coming from Emmerdale.

"We don't film weekends there usually unless there's been an illness or something and people don't collapse from exhaustion there.

"It's about ensuring the story balance is right and we're changing the filming structure as well so crews and directors aren't suddenly doing six a week, they will be broken up into blocks of four like at Emmerdale."

She also talked about the set extension, saying: "What I'm excited about is the lot extension - it will be a cool Truman Show experience when someone turns that corner of the street and then carries on.

"We are starting to build it imminently and it's a few months of construction."

Next week, Coronation Street's episodes will be spread out over the week with one every night from Monday to Friday to make way for Britain's Got Talent's nightly semi-finals.