It feels like ages since Rita was last seen in Corrie. She is one of my fave characters and she has been terribly underused recently. She has had hardly anything to do since the Cilla and Chesney storyline which is nearly 2 years ago now.

I want them to give her a huge storyline, Barbara Knox is the best actress Corrie has.

betty,rita,liz, havent been seen in ages

She's probably taking a bit of a break, hope we see her again soon, the older characters are one of the reasons I love the show.

Yeah Betty hasnt been seen for ages either. Or Penny King

Was Penny not on last wk offering Jamie a job?

Dont think so. Wasnt that all done through Mike?

I thought I saw her recently but I'm probably mistaken.

penny is back next week all these characters will all appear again soon just not when u expect it which makes it even more of a surprise blanche and ken havent been in it much either lately, penny and diggory are doing panto this xmas but both are still staying they work around it like they always do when they go off and do other stuff.im dying to see betty i just love her shes so like my nan and she's called emily bishop but no relation to her lol

I hope the new producer uses the long running characters more than this. Rita, Emily and Betty are 3 of the stars of the show yet they're hardly ever seen on screen.

You could be right. The cast is so huge these days and there are so many episodes I quickly forget who was in it and when

I totally agree - the favour particular characters depending on the current storyline & dump them once its over. & you never see them for months - then they are back in the spotlight again. Wonder how long the Frankie/Danny story will go on for

it would be nice to see just a whole episode or weeks episode with just all the old characters in it talking about all the old times etc like betty,blanche,emily,ken,deirdre,audrey,rita,mike,penny,jack,vera,norris,liz,eileen,keith,gail,bev, it prob never happen but we can hope lol

The Baldwins are over used in my opinion as is Shelley. Why don't they give them a back seat for a while and bring Rita, Emily, Betty & Norris to the forefront.

sooner they get rid of dev and hayley and roy the better i hate them 3 more than anything.norris is close as well

Norris is a camp classic and Roy and Hayley are lovely!

wasnt the last time rita seen when she was talking about going on a cruise the week after and asked blanche if she wanted to go ?

Well Betty was in tonights episode briefly - no sign of Reet though

Rita is at my house in the bath

I thought Rita was supposed to be involved in a big rivalry storyline with Audrey, there was a bit ages ago about the photo with Alf but nothing since, maybe its going to be a slow-burner?

Somewhere warmer if she had any sense

I think Barbara said not long ago that she no longer wanted any big storylines because it was too much work for her, and was happy to just appear now and then in smaller storylines - probably with Norris!

And there must be about 50 odd characters in Corrie these days, and they have to have storylines that last more than an episode or two so they only need certain characters for that so there's bound to be times when some characters disappear for a time while storylines they aren't involved in are going on.

No, that's over and done with. It's a typical storyline that gets built up like it'll last ages and is over in a week! It ended when Rita pointed out the photo was a double exposure - after she'd asked a photographer to look at the photo - and no such photo of Rita and Alf together exists. That was the end of the 'storyline'.

Then they need to reduce the cast to stop people being under used.

Corrie stars take these breaks, but unlike in other soaps, there is no issue made about it. I think that Barbara Knox is semi-retired

True - but that would cut back on all their holidays and we can't have that! I remember working out once roughly in the old days, by how long they disappeared from the screen, (cos I taped every episode and kept them) - the time when there was only 3 episodes a week - that the actors roughly got about 3 months off a year in total. These days they always seem to be on holiday so they must get a lot more than that off, and that's probably partly because it IS such a big cast and they can't all work at the same time!