“And the two vital things as you’ve seen is that Rhys [Connah] – Ryan [Cawood] is now at an age to make his own decisions about his life and the relationships in it and Catherine [Cawood] is on the brink of retirement and those felt like such juicy things to explore.
“In the police you have to retire at a very specific age, so it was really prescribed that it would return after this gap.”
Johnston added: “It definitely isn’t coming back and again, this is Sally and Sarah completely, rightly feeling you can’t have too much of a good thing.”
Siobhan Finneran – who is better known as Clare Cartwright – went on to say: “I think Sarah needed a big rest after series two. I think she needed a big sleep. There was a lot going on.”
