Coronation Street actress Thelma Barlow is set to come out of retirement and return to the limelight since quitting the soap 26 years ago, turning her hand to the big screen.
Barlow is best known for her role as Mavis Wilton and often starred alongside Barbara Knox who played Rita Tanner and will star in a short film – Sleepless In Seattle – which follows a mother trying to find a wife for her son.
The actress has also acted in the BBC sitcom Dinnerladies and said of her new role: “It was three action-packed days. It took me right back to my early days of rep theatre.”
She was also reunited with her former co-star Judy Flynn – who wrote and directed the short film – who opened up about the star coming out of retirement and said: “We met again at her 90th birthday party and I asked if I could write something specifically for her and she agreed.
“Filming with Thelma was a total joy. She had so much energy and was full of ideas.”
Barlow starred in Coronation Street until 1997 and was recently reunited with Knox last year as she celebrated her 90th birthday at the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park.
Thelma Barlow quit the ITV soap back in 1997
ITV
Their reunion was filmed for an ITV documentary where Knox was over the moon to be back together with her on-screen best pal, and said it had been “magnificent” to see her again.
“She was the best partner I could ever have had,” Knox told the Manchester Evening News before she fondly recalled they “went everywhere together” and were “great friends”.
“We really were good friends as well as acting together so well. We’ve kept in touch over the years and thank god she looks so well.”
At the time, Knox teased the possibility of the former double act getting back together and revealed she would welcome her back with open arms: “I would love Mavis back, like a shot.”
Thelma and Barbara were the duo of the cobbles during her time
ITV
Back in 2020, Barlow told The Mirror that she feared Coronation Street had lost the warmth and gentle comedy it had in her day as storylines become ever more gruesome.
She said: “I think the Street when I was in it had this wonderful thing of comedy, the comedy characters. I don’t watch it regularly now. I occasionally have a look but I don’t see much to laugh at now.
“I think it’s a shame. We used to get scripts where you’d talk about nothing important at all, nothing to do with the plot, but they could be so real and so funny. It was normal conversation without having great meaning and drama to it.”
Her return to acting comes after Lorna Laidlaw and Sally-Ann Matthews have both been rumoured to have left the soap, with their characters having been off-screen for a number of months.
Sally-Ann worried fans she would not be returning to the ITV soap
ITV
Matthews said on her Instagram Live recently that she was “remembering happier times” and warned her fans that they wouldn’t be seeing Jenny Connor on screen for a while.
Meanwhile, Laidlaw’s character Aggie Bailey has been missing since June last year, with a source claiming to The Sun that she has secretly left the soap and will star in the Channel 5 drama The Good Ship Murder.