And now Ben has revealed his vision for the next year of the show in a chat with The Sun and other media.

“We’ve got lots ahead, lots of new stuff that I’m excited about,” he said.

“You may have seen we’ve just announced Ronni Ancona joining the show, which I am very, very excited about. I’m a huge fan of her work and she brings such a unique tone to it.

 

 

“I was really interested in just having a story that has a bit more kind of tragic comedy coming through it. She’s an old school friend of Linda’s and she’s called Bea. Bea arrives and her memory of Linda is very different to Linda’s memory of Linda.

“Bea is the sort of character who might attach herself onto people so she kind of comes in and gets to reacquaint herself with Linda. It’s also going to be a big story for some other characters.

“Billy and Honey are going to be big in the new year and will be involved in that story as well, so it’s a story which, as a team, every time we watch it and read it we love it. We laugh and we cry and it’s really, really fun.”

Ben also revealed that there’s a villain returning to the show as Joel makes a comeback after brutally attacking Vicki Fowler.

He said: “After the misogyny story last year where we saw Joel was arrested, we’ve got his trial coming up so we’re gonna see Joel again as he faces the consequences of his actions. He’s pleading not guilty, and I think everyone’s struggling with why on Earth he’s put everyone through a trial.

“Vicki’s really going through the ringer of that, and Vicki, who wants to be committed so badly to Ross, but associates Ross now with everything that happened with Joel, her eye has been wandering slightly towards Zack.

“So we’ve got a big soapy love triangle in the mix of the new year. We’ve got a big story for Ravi going forward as he faces the consequences of his actions and all the awful things that he did in the previous few months, and what that starts to do to his psyche and his family.”

The executive producer also teased Harry Mitchell’s revenge on Ravi Gulati after he was manipulated into drug dealing and forced into addiction.

“A revenge plot from Harry Mitchell kicks us off early in the new year, and the continuation of Phil and Nigel’s story,” Ben explained.

“That beautiful episode, that will continue through and give us heart and warmth and just realism, and just gorgeous performances. Those relationships kind of see us through further into 2026.”

He also teased the upcoming New Year’s Day flashforward episode, saying: “You don’t have to wait an entire year to get all the answers, you’ll be getting answers from almost the episode after and then through every month, we’ll be giving you little bits.

“But also we twist a lot in that episode.

“Things are not as they seem so things that you will assume are going on there when you watch them in a year’s time will actually have quite a different light on them.

“But there’ll be lots of things within that episode that within the first few weeks and months, quite big answers you will start to get as an audience which I hope will be really satisfying that it kind of comes comes throughout the year.

“The plan is we’ll re-see elements of that [episode] which will make sense in the new light.

“There’ll be new scenes, there’ll be additional elements, so without giving too much away, it will be I think a very satisfying kind of coming together of two halves that I think will answer questions and be very satisfying to watch.”