Spring Into Summer concludes with a special episode starring Coronation Street and The Pact actress Julie Hesmondhalgh. She'll sit down with Alan to have a chat about her career, home life, and what it's like in the countryside near her Manchester home.
Speaking about the series, Alan said: "Spring into Summer’s whole ethos is country living, but also back garden living. However tiny your patch is we’ve got lots of ideas for how to use outside space as an outdoor room, and will be showing how to do that."
Here's what you need to know about the final episode of the nine part series, including an interview with Julie ahead of its broadcast.
Spring Into Summer release date
The final episode of Spring Into Summer will air on ITV at 8pm on Monday 7th June. Previous episodes can be watched on ITV Hub, featuring guests such as Clare Balding, Twiggy and Darcy Bussell. There are currently no plans to air Spring Into Summer in the US.
Interview with Julie Hesmondhalgh
The show is all about celebrating the great outdoors. Is getting out into nature important to you?
Massively. I live twenty minutes from the middle of Manchester and I love the city in so many ways; the culture, the galleries, the theatres, the cafes but I’m surrounded by the beautiful countryside of the Peak District. You can walk straight out into it from my home so I really feel I’ve got the best of both worlds. My parents passed on their great love of nature to me and my brother when we were growing up.
Do you enjoy spending time in your garden?
Our garden is quite wild but I like that. There’s a fine line between being slightly wild and completely out of control and full of brambles like something out of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. We’ve got a bit of that going on. We’ve had some stonking parties out there but it does take a bit of maintenance. I go out thinking I’m going to relax, sit down with a book and then spot a massive weed. I think, 'Oh, I’ll just pull that out' and then five hours have passed and I’m scratched to smithereens.
Are you still in touch with your former Coronation Street onscreen husband David Neilson and have you been watching Roy Cropper’s storyline with his niece, Nina?
Yes definitely. I watch Coronation Street all the time because I want to see what my friends are getting up to but also because my husband, Ian (Kershaw), is a storyline writer for Coronation Street. He actually wrote the episode that everyone was talking about when Roy gave that beautiful monologue at Nina’s bedside following the attack. My husband and I have been really invested with the Sophie Lancaster Foundation ever since I played Sylvia Lancaster in Black Roses and the foundation advised Ian massively on the storyline.
What’s next for you and is there a dream role that you’d love to get your teeth into?
I’m currently on tour with a play that my husband wrote, The Greatest Play In The History Of The World and after that I’m doing something at The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester about people who have been lost to Covid. I know actors have their dream roles but for me, I love new writers, so all the roles I’d love to play probably haven’t even been written yet! Telling stories is a way to make sense of this crazy world we live in, so any opportunity to do that is what I love most.
