Emmerdale will begin a special week of episodes on Monday, October 30. Lydia will hold a Dingle court at The Woolpack with the goal of identifying Craig’s killer.
Since her childhood friend Craig Reed (Ben Addis) raped her, Lydia (Karen Blick) has been living in a nightmare for the past three weeks. Sam (James Hooton), Lydia’s husband, was distraught when Lydia finally told her family the truth about what had truly transpired after hiding it for several weeks.
But when Craig is discovered dead, things might be about to get much worse for the family!
The episodes airing next week start with a shocked Billy Fletcher (Jay Kontzle) discovering Craig’s bloodied body in the Home Farm fields, shortly after Craig was tied up in a distant barn by Sam and Cain (Jeff Hordley).
After learning the news, Lydia gathers the Dingles for an unconventional lock-in at The Woolpack. Declaring to the stunned group that Craig has passed away, Lydia is certain that one of them must be at fault.
Lydia will hear the day’s events from each member of the family as she pretends to be Miss Marple. However, viewers will soon discover that they’re all concealing something when a sequence of flashbacks reveal the truth about what actually transpired.
Producer Laura Shaw says, “We focus on soap operas most beloved family, the Dingles, as Lydia attempts to find out who killed Craig in an unmissable special week for Emmerdale.” “Gary Williams directs with skill and originality, making the notorious Woolpack the focal point for the group of Dingles assembled to expose their alibis—or lack thereof, depending on the situation!”
“Diving from the typical Emmerdale format, a sequence of flashbacks will reveal to the audience the secrets and falsehoods each character has been hiding. With more and more explosive secrets coming to light every day that threaten to have far-reaching consequences, destroy lives, and produce fireworks in the Dingles greater than ever before, this week will definitely keep everyone on the tip of their seats.
Lydia starts her interrogation by asking about Sam and Cain’s location, knowing that they had pursued Craig.
The focus later moves on to Belle (Eden Taylor-Draper), who certainly hasn’t had a dull day. As Belle recounts her version of events, she reveals that boyfriend Tom had proposed to her following a romantic meal.
But Belle doesn’t give a true account of the entire day—what is she hiding and will the Dingles believe her?
Recent returnee Aaron (Danny Miller) then comes under the spotlight. Aaron has been lashing out since he was returned to the village against his will by Cain and Caleb (Will Ash), and it’s become very clear that he’s constantly on the lookout for a fight, not caring if he gets hurt.
Aaron soon manages to shift the focus onto Charity (Emma Atkins) however, which makes her nervous.
As we see what happened the previous day, Charity and Chas (Lucy Pargeter) are discussing the Craig situation when conversation then moves onto another subject… one which Charity decides to hold back the details of…
It’s then Caleb and Nate’s turn in the hot seat, as they recount their version of events, but what is Caleb hiding?
Even an emotional Mandy is hiding a secret, as she keeps something back from the family about what occurred.
Marlon also misses out a piece of very crucial piece of information as we see what really happened during his day.
When all alibis have finally been set out, Lydia remains convinced that one of them is not telling the full story.
Finally, unable to bear his guilt any longer, Sam comes clean. There’s more to his version of events…
It was great how it was filmed, Gary Williams was just amazing with us all and got us through quite a massive block of episodes, mainly centered around the Dingles in the the Woolpack environment.
But what’s different about this, I suppose, is the flashbacks. The spotlight is on various individuals throughout various episodes, and it centres around the idea that all 12 Dingles in the room are concealing some kind of secret which may or may not lead to Lydia discovering who actually killed Craig.
They’re each hiding something from the group when they recount their stories.
And there was an overhead camera used?
Yeah, I’ve not seen any of those shots yet but I’m led to believe that’s a homage to the 1950’s film 12 Angry Men. There was this sense that we were doing things slightly different.
We’d got quite ahead with the filming schedule over the several days we were in the Woolpack, and the last day pretty much centred around this overhead camera, sort of focusing on each individual before their flashback.
It’s been an interesting departure from our normal filming regime, but not being technically minded, I had no clue what was going on! So I’m really looking forward to the end result.
How was the atmosphere with all 12 of you filming together that intensively?
It was good. There’s been various cases where, in an environment like the Woolpack, a large swathe of the Dingle community has been together, but not quite in this sort of way. So it does break the mould slightly.
The concept, as it was laid out to us, was quite an interesting one. We had a total of seven days in the Woolpack, and it can be quite long days at the best of times in there. So the fact that we’re a group that tend to get on well with each other helped.
We had various tactics to get through our working day, Mark Charnock came up with an interesting game called ‘1 to 20’ which kept us occupied, and we had as good a laugh as was possible during the filming process.
It obviously is quite a heavy subject matter, but you’ve got to find ways of getting through the working day. I think we’ve got what Gary wanted us to get out of these eps. So hopefully we’ve balanced a bit of knockabout humour and having a laugh with getting the job done to the best of our abilities.
With everyone holding something back, it’s going to spin off stories for each character isn’t it?
Yeah, which I find very interesting. It’s not something that we’ve done in Emmerdale before. I’m not privy to how all these story strands pan out, but I think it’s it’s quite an innovative way of drawing an audience into what is quite a harrowing storyline.
How was Sam feeling when Lydia finally told him the truth about what happened to her?
I think it was a mixture of things. Sam was devastated, thinking that his wife didn’t love him any more and she was going to leave him. And then there was this question mark over whether she’d had an affair or not. So when it came to pass that he found out she’d actually been raped, it’s obviously a shock and all of the emotions that come along with finding something like that out.
But, essentially, whilst he’s a bit lost at some points, he just wants to make sure his wife’s okay and just to salvage her sanity and ability to move through it. And his own I think, which in part is what leads to Sam and Cain taking things into their own hands and kidnapping Craig.
He always wants the best for his wife. He loves her beyond belief and is extremely loyal, sort of to a fault almost. But he doesn’t always follow the requests that she’s given him, because Lydia was quite clear that she didn’t want mob law to rule and have us exact our own revenge against Craig. And there’s a dilemma as to whether Sam goes beyond her requests or not…
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