‘The Young And The Restless’ May Not Be Restarting Production In June
The Young and the Restless suspended production in mid-March due to COVID-19 concerns. Late last week, details from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s Department of Public Health released guidelines for how studios could resume production. Unfortunately, the instructions do not include studios on Los Angeles County, which is where the CBS Daytime drama films the show Soap Opera News Network reported.
The reason for the delay in Los Angeles County is that it experienced an uptick in hospitalizations late last week, which had been declining before that unexpected uptick.
“This has been a slight increase over the last three days in the number of people hospitalized, and we’ll need to make sure that we’re not starting to see a significant increase in the number of people requiring hospitalizations,” said Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
Last week, a coalition of groups submitted a 22-page white paper to the governors of California and New York that contained a variety of protocols to follow to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus when production resumes on various TV shows and movies. They included “[on] set hygiene, disinfection, and maintenance, catering, mandatory employment of COVID-19 Compliance Officer(s), symptom screening, physical distancing, paid leave policies and COVID-19 training, among other critically important topics necessary for the safe resumption of production.”
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Unfortunately for viewers, as long as L.A. County is not included among the counties in California that are safe to reopen, Y&R will not be able to begin filming new episodes again. At this point, it is unclear when the sudser might be able to resume production and create new storylines for fans.
The show ran out of new material a few weeks after it ceased production in mid-March. Since then, it has begun airing theme weeks filled with classic episodes based around specific topics such as Victor (Eric Braeden) and Nikki’s (Melody Thomas Scott) love story, the Winters family, the Abbott family, villains, and romance. It is not clear if the show plans to continue with the individual weeks, or if it might begin to air specific storylines in full again instead of jumping in and out with one episode at a time if the shutdown continues well into the summer.
When the storylines left off, Nikki had just revealed Victor’s secret to Adam (Mark Grossman), and Victoria (Amelia Heinle) retook her place as CEO at Newman Enterprises after her cruel treatment of Adam, which left their father disappointed.
