Britain's Got Talent has been recently providing the much-needed entertainment and light-relief during these uncertain times. The show returns in the spring each year, so after the coronavirus outbreak, we were pleased to learn that the audition episodes had been filmed earlier on in the year and would be aired as normal. However, the same can't be said about the live shows. For obvious reasons surrounding safety and social distances guidelines, the live episodes are up in the air. Here's what we know about when they could return.
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Shortly before the audition episodes returned, ITV said they hope the shows would return "later in the year". As well as this, long-term judge Amanda Holden explained the situation on her Heart FM radio show after being asked if the show would run without a studio audience. "I mean I think that Ant and Dec did an amazing job of Takeaway but I'm not sure our show, I think our show would suffer quite badly from not having a proper audience," she explained.
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ITV are hoping to bring the live shows back later in the year
"We have heard it's the autumn [that they will air]," she added. "I would say it might be later than September but it's quite a competitive time of year as well so… I'm hoping we can still strip it, strip means we sort of do it every single day like we used to or we might end up doing it over the weekends but it's all still in the running but I definitely think it's for the best."
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More recently, however, former judge Piers Morgan spoke to Amanda about the current situation during Good Morning Britain this week and also revealed Simon Cowell's viewpoint. "I was talking to Simon about this a few weeks ago when the decision was being taken whether to go ahead with it because you wouldn't know when the live shows would happen, and he was like 'you know what, in the general scheme of things, who cares? Let's just give people a bit of fun, the ratings have been great, everyone's been enjoying,'" he explained.
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