27/02/26 · Television
— Tinsel
Exit rumours arrive in threes every autumn, and they do it for a boring reason: contract cycles on continuing dramas mostly run to the same calendar, so late February is when agents start talking and therefore when everyone else starts guessing.
A long-serving character being written out, allegedly because of a film. The film in question shoots in a window that does not overlap with the block anyone would need to be released from, and the character is written into a storyline that has clearly been laid in for the back end of the year. You do not seed a nine-month arc for someone who is going.
This one comes round annually, always sourced to “a set insider”, always in the same week. I have now watched it appear three years running about the same person, who is still there.
Nobody is talking about this one, which is the first thing that makes me pay attention. The signs are all logistical rather than dramatic: a regular who has not been in the forward story conference notes since January, a dressing room that has been reassigned, and a scheduling gap that lines up with a stage season that was announced last month.
None of that is a source telling me something. It is three ordinary facts that have an ordinary joint explanation, and I would still rather publish it as a guess than dress it up as a scoop.
Because they read the story, and the story is written to mislead you on purpose. A soap that intends to lose a character spends three months making them look secure. If you want to know who is leaving, the useful documents are the least dramatic ones: schedules, room allocations, and who has stopped being invited to things.