New The Young & the Restless Head Writer Mal Young Will Have His Material Begin Airing In October

Mal Young, the new head writer and executive producer of The Young and the Restless’, will begin having his material aired in October, according to a new report from Daytime Confidential. Young is having to do double the work as he is taking over from Sally Sussman and Kay Alden, both former writers on the show who have expressed their intent to quit writing soap operas. But alas, Young quickly stepped in to fill the void, and he’s now not only the executive producer of the show and the head writer on it, but also writing for TWO departing writers – talk about multi-tasking!

It’s not enormously surprising that Mal Young would be given such a big responsibility, given his prolific career prior to The Young and the Restless. He previously co-created the enormously popular Doctors and Holby City in the UK, served as a story consultant for River City, AND produced Brookside, EastEnders, and the global success Doctor Who – and we haven’t even covered everything he’s worked on! In addition to being a writer and producer, he was also given the role of ‘controller for continuing drama’ at the BBC for quite a while, likely leading to his nuanced and naturalistic approach to storytelling, even in the sometimes larger-than-life soap world.

This background likely also enabled him to pitch ‘quite the extensive vision for Y&R, complete with well-fleshed out long stories for the soap’s core characters’, according to Daytime Confidential. Again, he would have had to have the complete confidence of the network to be given this level of responsibility, especially for the one of the network’s flagship soap operas. You don’t mess with millions of fans unless you have complete confidence in the person steering the ship, and it seems like there’s no steadier hand than Mal Young’s right now.

What do you guys think of the fact that Mal Young’s material will start airing in October? Is that too far away to see what the new head writer is up to? And do you have faith that Mal’s material will be up to par and honor the characters and storylines that we’ve come to know and adore, without also changing any of the things we love about Y&R? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.