Coronation Street executive producer Iain MacLeod has revealed that this week's shock attack storyline will have repercussions that play out for the rest of 2021.
In tonight's episodes, young lovers Nina (Mollie Gallagher) and Seb (Harry Visinoni) will be savagely beaten and left for dead by a gang of youths headed up by Corey (Maximus Evans).
The pair are hospitalised but Seb faces an unknown fate as his tests come back inconclusive - while back on the street, the teenagers involved in the incident scramble to get their stories straight.
"It will run and run and run, this story," MacLeod told reporters this week. "It's one of those things where a really shocking inciting incident triggers months and months of story repeating under cast at the centre of it. And everything that I've seen is just knockout.
"It draws in a lot of different families and in the best tradition of Coronation Street storylining, it pits neighbour against neighbour and in some cases, husband against spouse and all of those interesting areas of conflict. It becomes partly about class as well, going forwards.
"I can't say too much about that but in terms of how the criminal investigation unfolds, it becomes about class and background and privilege and there are interesting elements to it that we draw into the story as it unfolds.
"But yeah, at its core we wanted it to be a story about showing the horrific intolerance that can face people purely on the basis of how they look like, perhaps, or what music they might listen to or what subculture they identify with and that is the core of the storyline, right at the finish line. It's a story about intolerance and the reaction to that."
Coronation Street airs tonight at 7.30pm and 8.30pm on ITV.
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