Tonight is soap night on ITV!

Coronation Street fans can enjoy the first Thursday episode in the soap's 50-year history, as ITV gears up to become the destination for soap and drama on Thursdays. ITV announced recently that the soap would be switching from its usual slot on Wednesday nights to 7.30pm on Thursdays, starting on July 23. The channel said the move was necessary to make way for coverage of this year's UEFA Champions League. Fans have watched Coronation Street on Wednesdays since the soap fired aired in 1960. In addition, the hour-long Emmerdale episode on Tuesdays has been cut to 30 minutes - with a double bill now showing on Thursday nights instead. This means that soap fans can enjoy Emmerdale at 7pm and 8pm followed by Coronation Street at 8.30pm. These changes come at ITV1's long-running police drama The Bill moves to its new post-watershed time of 9pm. Click here to watch whatsontv.co.uk's new weekly soaps video preview, the Soap Scoop

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.