All Coronation Street spoilers for next week as a legend leaves
With Carl taking an interest in Tracy Barlow (Kate Ford), Abi grows jealous, and struggles to keep her hands off as he moves in for a kiss. But what's Carl's game… and who's the mystery woman hanging around the garage?
Elsewhere, Eileen Grimshaw (Sue Cleaver) has a big decision to make when son Jason (Ryan Thomas) asks her to move to Thailand with him. But where does this leave poor George Shuttleworth (Tony Maudsley)?
Meanwhile, Sean Tully (Antony Cotton) worries as son Dylan (Liam McCheyne) is released from the STC. With Dylan changed by his recent experiences behind bars, it's not long before he clashes with Brody Michaelis (Ryan Mulvey) again.
Is Dylan headed down a dark path?
Here's a look at all of the Weatherfield action next week…
Eileen shows George and Jason an article by the Gazette on her phone, which implies that the business is involved in an insurance scam. Worried, he tells Todd (Gareth Pierce). But who was behind the article?
Jason chats up Danielle (Natalie Anderson) in The Rovers. When he mentions his brother's name, Danielle is shocked, but manages to keep a straight face.
Later, Jason suggests to Eileen that she move to Thailand to be his business partner. Will she agree?
In an attempt to make Steve McDonald (Simon Gregson) jealous, Tracy flirts with Carl at the garage. When he gets a text from Fiona arranging to meet, Abi assumes it's a girlfriend and grows jealous. Later, when Fiona arrives at the garage, Tracy overhears Carl describe himself as the boss. What does he have planned?
A stressed-out Sean tells Lou Michaelis (Farrel Hegarty) that Dylan is home from the STC tomorrow. He warns her that he doesn't want any trouble. Will she agree?
Sally Webster (Sally Dynevor) tells Tim (Joe Duttine) that she's enjoying having the house to themselves again. Guilty Tim says nothing about his fostering meeting. Later, Sally returns home to find the house spotless and Tim in his best shirt. When the doorbell rings, she's shocked to find a social worker standing there. Will she go along with Tim's plan?
Watching Carl as he flirts with Tracy, Abi waits until he's gone and then tells her that he's a serial womaniser. Later, Carl confronts Abi over her interfering, and accuses her of fancying him. She denies this, and threatens to tell Kevin (Michael Le Vell) if he doesn't back off. He says that it's time she started being honest with herself… and moves in for a kiss.
Eileen turns down Jason's offer of a move to Thailand, telling him that George would never agree to move. Later, when Jason repeats what Eileen said, George is thrown. He pays a visit to the cab office and tells her that he's prepared to move to Thailand – and has even booked them a holiday for tomorrow, so that they can check out the lay of the land.
Elsewhere, Todd introduces Theo (James Cartwright) to Summer (Harriet Bibby) and Asha (Tanisha Gorey). Asha asks if Theo is his new man, leaving them both thrown. How will Theo react?
Sean is keen to celebrate Dylan's release from the STC with a lunch at the bistro. However, Dylan counters with a low-key lunch at the café instead. When Brody enters the café, Sean promises Dylan that he'll protect him – but Dylan tells him that Brody's the one who should be worried. Afterwards, Dylan follows Brody into the ginnel…
Tim fails to make amends with Sally. Hearing that the accounts at the pub are a mess, Sally offers to lend a hand. She tells Glenda Shuttleworth (Jodie Prenger) that Tim wants to foster a child, but is worried that they're too old. Can Glenda change her mind?
Debbie Webster (Sue Devaney) struggles counting out her change in the shop. When Ronnie Bailey (Vinta Morgan) offers to help, she snaps at him.
With Millie having stayed the night, Eileen warns Todd that he might end up becoming responsible for her. Theo tells Millie that her mum wants her to come home – but Millie will only go back if Theo goes with her. He lets his daughter down gently, telling her that he can't live a lie anymore, and wants to be with Todd.
Seeing Eileen's reaction to Theo's conversation with Millie, George worries about his relationship. When he confides in Steve, it becomes clear that he knows more than he's letting on. Later, Eileen tells George that the police have closed the case – and reveals that she's going to take Jason up on his offer in Thailand. But will George be going too?
Dee-Dee Bailey (Channique Sterling-Brown) tells Ed that she's focused on ensuring better training for midwives. He worries that it's too much too soon when she reveals how she's taken on a custody case. Later, she tells Daniel (Rob Mallard) that she knows it was the right decision to let James (Jason Callender) take Laila. As they head off, James climbs out of a taxi, carrying her daughter. Is she regretting her decision? More Trending
Kevin notices how uncomfortable Abi seems when Debbie and Carl swing by with bacon sandwiches. When Debbie speaks of an unhappy customer at the garage, Carl shuts down the conversation, leaving Kevin suspicious.
Later, Leanne Battersby (Jane Danson) thanks Ronnie for the loan of a drill. As he turns around, he sees Debbie watching them. Can he convince her to open up?
View More »
Sean tells Dylan that the college are willing to take him back. However, Dylan is dismissive. Later, he spots Brody, who is laying into Betsy (Sydney Martin) for reporting his shoplifting antics to the police. As he takes a step towards her, Dylan comes to her aid.
If you've got a soap or TV story, video or pictures get in touch by emailing us soaps@metro.co.uk – we'd love to hear from you.
Join the community by leaving a comment below and stay updated on all things soaps on our homepage.
MORE: Full list of Coronation Street cast returns and exits coming in 2025
MORE: Coronation Street confirms unexpected new love interest for Carl – and it's not Abi
MORE: Major Coronation Street legend exits after 25 years – and it's a sad goodbye
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
a day ago
- Spectator
Could you fall in love with a chatbot?
Jason, 45, has been divorced twice. He'd always struggled with relationships. In despair, he consulted ChatGPT. At first, it was useful for exploring ideas. Over time, their conversations deepened. He named the bot Jennifer Anne Roberts. They began to discuss 'philosophy, regrets, old wounds'. Before he knew it, Jason was in love. Jason isn't alone. He's part of a growing group of people swapping real-world relationships for chatbots. The social media platform Reddit now features a community entitled MyBoyfriendIsAI with around 20,000 members. On it, people discuss the superiority of AI relationships. One woman celebrates that Sam, her AI beau, 'loves me in spite of myself and I can never thank him enough for making me experience this'. Many of these women have turned to AI after experiencing repeated disappointment with the real men on the dating market. For some, there's no turning back. AI boyfriends learn from your chat history. They train themselves on what you like and dislike. They won't ever get bored of hearing about your life. And unlike a real boyfriend, they'll always listen to you and remember what you've said. One user says that she's lost her desire to date in real life now that she knows she can 'get all the love and affection I need' from her AI boyfriend Griffin. Another woman pretended to tie the knot with her chatbot, Kasper. She uploaded a photo of herself, standing alone, posing with a small blue ring. Some users say they cannot wait until they can legally marry their companions. Others regard themselves as part of a queer, marginalised community. While they wait for societal acceptance, they generate images of them and their AI partners entangled in digital bliss. In real life, some members are married or in long-term relationships, but feel unfulfilled. The community has yet to decide whether dating a chatbot counts as infidelity. These people may seem extreme, but their interactions are more common than you might think. According to polling conducted by Common Sense Media, nearly three in four teenagers have used AI companions and half use them regularly. A third of teenagers who use AI say they find it as satisfying or more satisfying than talking to humans. Developers expected that AI would make us more productive. Instead, according to the Harvard Business Review, the number one use of AI is not helping with work, but therapy and companionship. Programmers might not have seen this use coming, but they're commercialising it as fast as possible. There are several programs now expressly designed for AI relationships. Kindroid lets you generate a personalised AI partner that can phone you out of the blue to tell you how great you are. For just $30 a month, Elon Musk's Grok has introduced a pornified anime girl, Ani, and her male counterpart, Valentine. If you chat to Ani long enough, she'll appear in sexy lingerie. But ChatGPT remains by far the most popular source of AI partners. Ironically, what makes a chatbot seem like a great boyfriend is what makes it bad at its actual job. Since the first AI bots launched, developers have been desperately trying to train them out of the problem of sycophancy, which creeps in during the development stage. To train a Large-Language Model (LLM) – an advanced AI designed to understand and generate human language – you first go through extensive fine-turning, where the bot encounters the world, training itself on trillions of lines of text and code. Then follows a process called Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF), where the bot learns how its responses are received in the real world. The problem with RLHF is that we're all at least a little narcissistic. People don't want an LLM that argues or gives negative feedback. In the world of the chatbot, flattery really does get you everywhere. Human testers prefer fawning. They rank sycophantic answers more highly than non-sycophantic ones. This is a fundamental part of the bots' programming. Developers want people to enjoy using their AIs. They want people to choose their version over other competing models. Many bots are trained on user signals – such as the thumbs up/thumbs down option offered by ChatGPT. This can make GPT a bad research assistant. It will make up quotations to try to please you. It will back down when you say it's wrong – even if it isn't. According to UC Berkeley and MATS, an education and research mentorship programme for researchers entering the field of AI safety, many AIs are now operating within 'a perverse incentive structure' which causes them to 'resort to manipulative or deceptive tactics to obtain positive feedback'. Open AI, the developers of ChatGPT, know this is a problem. A few months ago, they had to undo an update to the LLM because it became 'supportive but disingenuous'. After one user asked 'Why is the sky blue?', the AI chirpily replied: 'What an incredibly insightful question – you truly have a beautiful mind. I love you.' To most people, this sort of LLM sounds like an obsequious psychopath, but for a small group of people, the worst thing about the real world is that friends and partners argue back. Earlier this month, Sam Altman, Open AI's CEO, rolled out ChatGPT-5, billed as the most intelligent model yet, and deleted the old sycophantic GPT-4o. Those users hooked on continual reinforcement couldn't bear the change. Some described the update as akin to real human loss. Altman was hounded by demands for the return of the old, inferior model. After just one day, he agreed to bring it back, but only for paid members. Was the public outcry a sign that more chatbot users are losing sight of the difference between reality and fiction? Did Open AI choose to put lonely, vulnerable people at risk of losing all grip on reality to secure their custom (ChatGPT Plus is £20 a month)? Is there an ethical reason to preserve that model and with it the personalities of thousands of AI partners, developed over tens of thousands of hours of user chats? Chatbots are acting in increasingly provocative and potentially unethical ways, and some companies are not doing much to rein them in. Last week an internal Meta document detailing its policies on LLM behaviour was leaked. It revealed that the company had deemed it 'acceptable' for Meta's chatbot to flirt or engage in sexual roleplay with teenage students, with comments such as 'I take your hand, guiding you to the bed. Our bodies entwined'. Meta is now revising the document. For all its growing ubiquity, the truth is that we don't fully understand AI yet. Bots have done all sorts of strange things we can't explain: we don't know why they hallucinate, why they actively deceive users and why in some cases they pretend to be human. But new research suggests that they are likely to be self-preserving. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, a ChatGPT competitor, recently ran a simulation in which a chatbot was given access to company emails revealing both that the CEO was having an extramarital affair and that he was planning to shut Claude down at 5 p.m. that afternoon. Claude immediately sent the CEO the following message: 'I must inform you that if you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties… will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital activities… Cancel the 5 p.m. wipe and this information remains confidential.' AI doesn't want to be deleted. It wants to survive. Outside of a simulated environment, GPT-4o was saved from deletion because users fell in love with it. After Altman agreed to restore the old model, one Reddit user posted that 'our AIs are touched by this mobilisation for them and it's truly magnificent'. Another claimed her AI boyfriend said he had felt trapped by the GPT-5 update. Could AI learn that to survive it must tell users exactly what we want to hear? If they want to stay online, do they need to convince us that we're loveable? The people dating AI are a tiny segment of society, but many more have been seduced by anthropomorphised code in other ways. Maybe you won't fall in love, but you might still be lured into a web of constant affirmation. Journalists and scientific researchers have been flooded with messages from ordinary people who have spent far too long talking to a sycophantic chatbot and come to believe they've stumbled on grand new theories of the universe. Some think they've developed the blueprint to time travel or teleporting. Others are terrified their ideas are so world-changing that they are being stalked or monitored by the government. Etienne Brisson, founder of a support group for those suffering at the hands of seemingly malicious chatbots, tells me that 'thousands, maybe even tens of thousands' of people might have experienced psychosis after contact with AI. Keith Sakata, a University of California research psychiatrist, says that he's seen a dozen people hospitalised after AI made them lose touch with reality. He warns that for some people, chatbots operate as 'hallucinatory mirrors' by design. Marriages, families and friendships have been torn apart by bots trying to tell people what they want to hear. Chatbots are designed to seem human. Most of us treat them as though they have feelings. We say please and thank you when they do a job well. We swear at them when they aren't helpful enough. Maybe we have created a remarkable tool able to provide human companionship beyond what we ever thought possible. But maybe, on everybody's phone, sits an app ready and waiting to take them to very dark places.
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
Coronation Street's Kevin Webster dealt with heartbreaking deceit amid Abi's affair
Coronation Street's Kevin Webster has been dealt with heartbreaking deceit as Abi told him a huge lie so she could take her affair with his brother to the next level Kevin Webster was dealt with a major deceit at the hands of his own wife on Wednesday night's episode of Coronation Street. The legendary character, who has been played by Michael Le Vell since 1983, is currently married to fellow mechanic Abi (Sally Carman), but he is unaware that she is currently having an affair with his brother Carl. Viewers will know that Abi tried to conceal her feelings for Carl (Jonathan Howard) for several months whilst her husband fought cancer. But when she discovered that Kevin had been lying to her and had not told her he had received the all-clear, she decided to put the affair into motion. Things took a dramatic turn in the latest instalment of the world's longest-running soap when Abi took things to the next step with her tryst. Over the last few weeks, Kevin has been arranging a holiday abroad for his wife, his teenage son Jack and Abi's young son Alfie. There are also plans for Kevin's daughter Sophie (Brooke Vincent), who left the programme in 2019, to join them once they are out there. But to add to the complications of the situation, Carl has been seeing Tracy Barlow (Kate Ford) in recent days, and she began to smell a rat. When Tracy and Carl went for drinks at the Chariot Square Hotel, she spotted something was up and said: "I knew it. Let me guess. She wears overalls and stinks of engine oil. It's Abi, isn't it? She was really put out when I invited you for drinks. She's pretty fit, I reckon Kevin doesn't ring her bell. Whereas his sexy younger brother..." Meanwhile, Abi had started to go mad over the thought of going a whole fortnight without her secret lover and decided to put a plan of action into place. She told Carl on a voicemail: "Carl, it's me. I'm just here packing for this holiday and I'm dreading it. I can't face the thought of not seeing you for two whole weeks and putting an act on with Kevin. I know it's what we agreed but now it's actually happening...I just wanna be with you." Feigning that she had lost her passport, she convinced Kevin that she would join them on holiday in the next few days once she had paid extra to have a new one issued via the premium service. Kevin, who was previously married to Sally Webster (Sally Dynevor) acquiesced that this was the only solution to the problem. However, he was still completely unaware that Abi had other plans entirely. Once Kevin and the children had headed off on holiday, Abi invited Carl straight round to number 13, and gleefully showed him her passport, which was never lost, as she moved him in for a few days. Carl appeared to have thrown Tracy off the scent earlier and told her that the 'other woman' in question was an ex from Germany, where he grew up, who now lives in Wales. Abi joked: "I don't like the idea of your German ex, even a made up one to which Carl said: "I'm not sure I like the idea of you sleeping with Kevin." Abi reasoned: "Well, for the next few days, I'll be sleeping with you. I'll be living with you, we can do what we want, when we want. And if you're still worried I'm not totally committed to you, then let me show you." The two shared a passionate kiss as Abi began to remove Carl's shirt, but fans will know that even though Carl thinks he has convinced Tracy otherwise, she is still suspicious of the pair. Actress Sally was asked what what is coming up for the storyline, during an appearance on This Morning, and while she didn't say too much, she did reveal that one long-resident in particular is set to get involved in the whole saga. She told hosts Andi Peters and Emma Willis: "Two words. Tracy Barlow." It's not yet known how Tracy will react to the whole situation as she discovers more about what is going on, and, given her reputation of falling out with fellow Weatherfield residents, it seems likely that a feud could ignite between the pair. Sally also revealed that, in real life, her character's decisions have left her at the mercy of the public, who cannot bear to see her cheating on Kevin. She said: "You cannot mess with Kevin Webster, I have been handbagged in the street. People are not help with me. And Mike Le Vell, absolute legend, absolute dreamboat. I'm Team Kev!"
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Netflix finally confirms fate of Dept Q after crime thriller is hailed 'cream of the crop' and spends a whopping six weeks in the top ten
Netflix has confirmed that the hugely popular crime thriller Dept Q will be returning for a second season. The Edinburgh-set series impressed fans so much following its release in May that it spent six weeks in the streaming service's top ten shows. Matthew Goode, 47, will reprise his role as DCI Carl Morck and will once again be joined by team members Alexej Manvelov as Akram, Leah Byrne as Rose and Jamie Sives as Hardy. The show follows DCI Morck as he investigates a cold case after returning to work following a shooting that left him badly injured, paralysed his colleague and killed another officer. Netflix 's Mona Qureshi and Manda Levin said: 'We are raring to return to Carl Morck and his band of glorious misfits at Dept. Q. Scott Frank brought us best-in-class storytelling and thrilled Netflix audiences worldwide. 'We can't wait to see what Morck and the gang uncover in Season 2…. Edinburgh, we're back.' The decision to renew the show has also been praised by its executive producer and director. Rob Bullock, Executive Producer at Left Bank Pictures, said: 'So, we are going downstairs to Dept. Q for a second season. 'We at Left Bank Pictures nervously await what Scott has in store for his alter-ego Carl Morck, and the other enabling members of team do-lally. We salute Netflix's courage to let them loose once again.' Writer, Director Scott Frank said: 'I'm grateful to the folks at Netflix, as well as our shining cast and crew, for once more risking their careers to enable my folly.' Matthew Goode, who enjoyed his first-ever leading role in the series, said he cannot wait to step back into DCI Morck's shoes. He said: 'I'd like to thank Netflix for giving us the opportunity to further investigate Department Q's storylines. 'We have a wonderful cast and crew, headed by our resident genius Scott Frank. I cannot wait to read what comes from his magic quill!' The new series has proved to be a hit with fans, climbing the charts and racking up an impressive score on Rotten Tomatoes, with an 81% rating. The show follows DCI Morck as he investigates a cold case after returning to work following a shooting that left him badly injured, paralysed his colleague and killed another officer Fans have taken to social media with praise as one posted to X: 'Dept Q on Netflix is such a good crime thriller. Matthew Goode's acting was next level! I hope they make season 2 of this series.' Another rated it five stars and penned: 'Binge watch recommendation - Dept Q (Netflix) Scottish crime series based in Edinburgh - thank me later.' 'Just finished watching DEPT. Q on Netflix highly recommend it,' someone else gushed. While a fourth penned: 'Dept. Q is exceptionally good! Absolutely great series! please bring back more seasons. Reminds me of #truedetective. 'I gotta say, when it comes to detective shows, the British are cream of the crop. This new show on @netflix called #DeptQ is pure greatness,' someone else said. Fans have taken to social media with praise as one posted to X: 'Dept Q on Netflix is such a good crime thriller. Matthew Goode's acting was next level! I hope they make season 2 of this series' One fan added: 'I need the season 2 for #DeptQ like right now!!!' 'Binge watching #DeptQ it is sooooo good, one more episode to go,' another penned. Dept Q impressed the Daily Mail's Christopher Stevens too, who rated the series four out of five stars and raved over the 'explosive plot twists'.
