If you’d asked any Coronation Street fan six months ago to guess who’d be taking centre stage in this year’s Christmas episodes, it’s unlikely that a brand new soap family would have been among anyone’s predictions. But the ITV show took a slight risk with its festive episode this year, putting returning character Eva Price and her new Driscoll clan right at the forefront – less than two months after they’d moved into The Rovers.

Christmas episodes are often shop-windows for the soaps, drawing in more casual viewers who may not catch up with the shows all year round. We may have expected a bigger or more long-running storyline to take the spotlight, although this time around, all bets were off: we already know that Corriedale is playing host to many of the pivotal moments on 5 January instead.

Fortunately, there were all the classic ingredients that you’d probably expect from a soap Christmas: a bombshell at the dinner table, a dramatic punch scene, and one poor soul left unconscious at the end. Who attacked Daniel Osbourne? More on that later…

The introduction of the Driscolls has sparked an interesting period for Corrie, and at times, what’s on screen hasn’t always matched the PR. When the new family were announced in the autumn, the show made bold statements about focusing on “warmth, joy and happiness” with the family, injecting new life into The Rovers and bringing back some of the classic Corrie comedy. All things that devoted fans wanted to hear.

That has all happened to some degree – the pub feels more lively and there’s more humour – but there have been much darker storylines for the Driscolls in play too, involving deaths and issue-based storytelling. All things that are more divisive among fans, which perhaps explains why none of it was mentioned at the time.

For example, family matriarch Maggie accidentally killed her husband years ago and keeps making ominous remarks alluding to murder and death in every other scene. Has the show found its next serial killer?

Meanwhile, youngest family member Will is being groomed by his sports coach Megan, as revealed in his very first week on screen in October. It’s a topic that was previously explored successfully with Jacob Gallagher in Emmerdale, although in that case, we’d known the character for years beforehand and this longevity meant that the storytelling could have much greater impact.

The performances are great in each plot, but there’s a sense of the show rushing through storylines which could have been slowly introduced over two years or more, rather than two months.

In many ways, though, the Christmas episode was a refreshing change of approach – showing some restraint with the Driscolls rather than burning through any more big storylines at a rapid pace.

For a while this week, some vague conversations between Eva and Adam left fans wondering whether they’d had a secret affair during Eva’s time away from our screens.

This would have been a confusing retcon for viewers, so it was a relief to see the Christmas episode set the record straight: Eva secretly fell pregnant to Ben and didn’t want to keep the baby, while Adam had merely acted as a confidant and supportive friend for Eva following a chance meeting in Hull.

Maggie’s spiteful move at the Christmas dinner table – exposing the heartfelt letter that Eva had written to the baby she’d aborted – caused total chaos. Harsh words were exchanged, accusations spread around like wildfire, and Ben took a “punch first, ask questions later” approach with poor Adam. Ouch.