While soaps including Hollyoaks, EastEnders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale have currently paused filming during the COVID-19 lockdown, one popular long-running series is just days from resuming production - and it sounds like they will be doing it very safely!
Neighbours will resume filming in April
Neighbours will return to filming very shortly, thanks to the relatively low level of coronavirus cases in Australia. Fremantle Media's chief executive Chris-Oliver Taylor opened up about the decision, telling ABC AU: "It's going to look a bit odd. [But] Neighbours is a show that can get away with it. We employ hundreds of staff who want to work and feel they can. It's important we continue to produce a show that reaches millions of people in the UK and a significant audience in Australia."
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Changes during this time will also include social distancing in scenes, a smaller make-up team, and divided teams of cast and crew to keep the numbers on set as low as possible. Chris-Oliver continued: "There will be no more than 100 people a day in any area, we'll implement the four-square-metre rule and the one-and-a-half-metre social distancing rule. We're going to assume if someone does get sick we don't need to shut the entire shoot — we just close that group and carry on."
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Meanwhile, other soaps are slowing down the rate of weekly transmissions to keep the already-filmed episodes going for as long as possible. Regarding EastEnders, a BBC spokesperson previously released a statement which read: "In light of the spread of Covid-19, after much consideration, it has been decided that filming on EastEnders will be postponed until further notice. The decision was made after the latest government update. We will continue to follow the latest news and advice from the World Health Organisation and Public Health England. We have also taken the decision to reduce the amount of episodes we broadcast each week to two, so that we can ensure the audience can continue to enjoy EastEnders in their homes for as long as possible."
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