Emmerdale to mark International Women’s Day with all-female episode - No boys allowed!

Episode will also be 'produced by a female, directed by a female and written by a female'

Emmerdale bosses have revealed plans for a female-only episode to coincide with International Women’s Day on 8^th March.

The ITV soap is already leading the way when it comes to girl power, with three women at the helm in executive producer Jane Hudson, and producers Kate Brooks and Laura Shaw. It’s the first time that a soap has had an all-female team at the top.

Says exec producer Jane Hudson: “We are going to have an episode that is produced by a female, directed by a female and written by a female.

“The entire cast will be female, including all the background artistes, and we will have almost an entirely female crew. What they don’t realise is that we’ll be giving some of the men the traditional female roles for the day, so we’ll all be bringing our kids in for them to look after.

“We’re really excited to be recognising International Women’s Day and doing our bit for it.”

It’s not the first time that the soap has done something a bit different. Former producer Iain MacLeod experimented with non-linear timescales in several episodes including the Hotten bypass crash in October 2016, and Robert Sugden’s “Groundhog Day” last Christmas.

More recently, Monday’s episode featured fan favourites Chas and Paddy imagining trips out with their daughter Grace, who died shortly after her birth due to the condition bilateral renal agenesis.

Alison Slade has over 20 years of experience as a TV journalist and has spent the vast majority of that time as Soap Editor of TV Times magazine. She is passionate about the ability of soaps to change the world by presenting important, issue-based stories about real people in a relatable way. There are few soap actors that she hasn’t interviewed over the years, and her expertise in the genre means she has been called upon as a judge numerous times for The British Soap Awards and the BAFTA TV Awards.

When she is not writing about soaps, watching soaps, or interviewing people who are in soaps, she loves going to the theatre, taking a long walk or pottering about at home, obsessing over Farrow and Ball paint.