The secrets of making a good soap

[quartermainefan]

England is such a geographically small country that there are not hundreds of local stations like in the US.

[DRW50]

Coronation Street is lucky enough to still be able to afford their veteran characters and a wide variety of cast members. ITV is having money problems, they've benched a number of their once popular shows to cut costs. Emmerdale and Corrie may soon face deep cuts.

I enjoy Coronation Street because most of the show reminds me of what American soaps used to be, with some exceptions like the constant propping of Michelle Connor. Their storytelling could use some improvement though.

Emmerdale has drastically improved over the past few months, but they've lost a good chunk of viewers over the past few years and may not get them backa.

Eastenders is the soap which reminds me most of American soaps, and not in a good way. A slew of unsympathetic, cold characters, shock value stories which fizzle out, and shoddy performances.

Most of the soaps haven't gone past 10 million this year, even though they usually have their best ratings in winter months. UK viewers seem to be moving more towards reality programming.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I agree, even when it's bad, Coronation Street is still somehow watchable and feels grounded. However, when EastEnders is good, it's GOOD, but when it's bad, it's BAD.

[All My Shadows]

You've perfectly described by relationships with B&B and ATWT. If I watched B&B today, I'd probably enjoy it and plan to watch tomorrow, even if the storylines do suck tremendously.

Michelle Connor...the one who found out that Carla was cheating with her husband, and so after Carla married Tony, she ran around the wedding place screaming for Carla to show her face? I saw a couple of those episodes, and I liked them. There was one character who gave me the creeps though...I think her name was Janice, and she had short blond hair and scary voice.

[Cat]

I know that the two main channels -- BBC and ITV -- have regional affiliates, and when I was little, I think these affiliates had much more daytime TV slots to play with. However, I think that has lessened somewhat over time and certain daytime talk shows (which are popular with housewives, the retired, students and, uh, the unemployed) will air as a national show. However, there are some time slots which are given over to regional news or public-service type broadcasting. Not an enormous amount.

Moreover, I think the big soaps like EE and Coronation Street... if they are on at, say, 7pm in London, they'll be on at 7pm in northern Scotland, you know? There would probably be a riot if they tried to pre-empt one of those shows.

Also, random thing: UK shows aren't always in tidy, 1-hour packages like in the US (except at Primetime). Like, during the day, there are a lot of half-hour shows and they are broadcast at times, like, 2.55-3.25pm. If a TV station is showing an old movie or something, other shows during the day "bend" around that scheduled movie. When I was in the UK, most people got a "TV Guide"-style listings magazine every week so that they could keep track of show times and stuff.

[Cat]

LOL, you've described my Y&R/GH viewing relationship. Until Lynn Marie Troll's Out of our Asses debacle, Y&R was a non-negotiable watch. It is back to being that way again. Even when bad, there were elements that saved it. GH, on the other hand, scales the heights and plumbs the depths. In fact, I always felt GH and EE had a lot in common, not least an obsession with organised crime "families," much-hyped Sweeps story arcs and episodes sometimes constructed to showcase their A-list actors, Emmy-reel style.

No... I think the chick who found out about Carla and Liam was Maria Sutherland, Liam's bimbo wife.

Michelle Connor is Liam's sister?/cousin? I forget. She has a sleek, black bob and helps run the pub.

LOL, my British soap-watching past is coming back to haunt me!

[Ben]

They're not. The "TiVo" recordings are now taken into consideration. I think BARB, allow a period of 7 days from original airing, which is added to the overall ratings. And for the last year or so, all of the major networks have established an online service, where the most popular shows can be d/l for a number of days. Plus, we also have what is known as, timeshift channels, where the majority of networks (bar the BBC franchise, ITV1 and Five) broadcast their entire schedule an hour later - this has proven v. popular and has cut the # of d/ls. (Speaking to an American mate, she loved the idea of timeshift.) The only time they've really had any problem with the Internet, is when it comes to US shows. The time delay between airings in the US and UK, meant that viewers were d/ling instead of waiting, which was biting a large chuck into the ratings. Channel 4 and Sky One were the hardest it (weirdly, Five ignored the trend and came out of it unscathed), which is why they started fast tracking US shows earlier (Oz are having the same problem).

I love the way American's view all things British - it's so quaint and ideal.

I'll sum up BBC 1's schedule... Soaps, medical dramas, costume dramas, dire comedies, sport, documentaries, news, reality singing/dancing contests, follow cops/paramedics/sea patrol/mountain rescue/fire-fighters as they arrest/save lives/put out fires, public awareness shows, and finally, some decent crime/spy/general dramas blended with Medium and Damages (BBC 1 only air two US series (bar the rerun loop of Diagnosis Murder!)).

This might all seem varied, but variety is not necessarily linked with quality. It's weird really, because over here, we tend to think of America as leading the way.

No, not really. The same schedule airs throughout the UK, with exceptions to regional news and country specific shows, like, Scotland's soap, which gets slotted in, either omitting whatever normally airs in England, or just moving it to a different day.

I hear that a lot. But I tend to go the opposite. When Corrie's bad, I tune out, but when Eastenders is bad, I'm more inclined to watch, unless it gets exceptionally bad, like it did during 2005-06, and I couldn't take no more.

You mean Maria. Michelle is the annoying one w/the black hair, who works behind the bar.

ETA: Cat beet me to it!

[Ben]

Most people now keep track via the EPG (Electronic Program Guide), which comes with having digital. The sale of TV Guides have decreased, which is why a lot of them have turned into a general sort of entertainment magazine.

[DRW50]

Michelle is the Connor sister. She lived with Steve Macdonald, working in his pub. She rarely works, she usually just plans things, or goes on trips to Ireland to see her parents (she goes to Ireland like 8 times a year). She had a long and unpopular storyline last year where she found out her son had been switched at birth. She became distant from the son she'd raised, was rude to Steve, Steve had to do all the work with her son. Then after months of a very strained relationship, he got drunk and had a one night stand with another woman. Michelle began to suspect the truth and shook his friends down, demanding they tell her the truth. She punched him in the face. She accused one of her coworkers, who had once caused problems for Michelle's brothers, of being Steve's mistress. She essentially called her a whore and fired her, even though she had no authority to hire and fire. She was a horrible cow for months on end. And then, suddenly, when Corrie seemed to sense she wasn't as popular as they wanted her to be, the story became about Steve being a bad boyfriend so she'd break up with him, and every conversation in which she was mentioned became about what a good mother and girlfriend and friend and person she was.

She is the only character on the show who has that awful propping disorder I hate on some soaps. Otherwise most of the characters are very flawed and very interesting.

Coronation Street was built on the backs of strong female characters and that still holds true today, mostly, with Becky, Carla, Leanne, Sally, Blanche, Eileen, among others.

I also love Emmerdale at the moment, which doesn't get as much recognition as the other soaps.

[Cat]

LOL, now I feel old! Excuse me while I push aside my zimmer frame and make a call on my round-dial telephone. Of course you have EPG, just like we have here. I was just channeling my time in the UK back in the Olden Days (i.e.: 5-10 years ago).

And you are definitely right that quantity and variety does not mean quality. That horrendous comedy "My Family" comes to mind. Is that show still on? It felt like it had been going on forever when I was over there. Even the laugh-track sounded depressed.

I will say that the TV shows I watched the most in the UK were... US TV shows. Sunset Beach. Buffy. Angel. How I miss thee.

[All My Shadows]

thanks, Cat and Carl, for the responses!

Ah, okay, so that was Maria. I watched those eps several weeks ago, so I forgot names. Wikipedia can be your very best friend sometimes lol So it was Maria who had been married to Liam, and so when Sally and Rosie showed her the video of Carla and Liam kissing, she went nuts and ran around the place screaming for Carla. Okay. The person who uploaded those eps started putting up January episodes, so I think I need to catch up.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I'd always figured that stuff like Welsh "Pobol y Cwm" and, in the past, Scottish "Take the High Road," aired all throughout the UK, but now I see that Pobol only airs in Wales and that High Road originally aired across the UK but was basically limited to just Scotland by the early-to-mid 90s. I would guess that the situation with Pobol would be similar to local stations here producing and airing their own local talk shows or children's shows (but with Pobol, it's always been produced by the BBC and not BBC Wales or S4C), and the situation with High Road is similar to how local stations dropped stuff like "Ryan's Hope" and "Loving" before they were actually canceled.

I'd never even considered the size difference between the UK and the US. That's probably a major, major, major factor into why the UK does things like that one way and the US does it another way.

So, it is rare (if it ever even happens) for a show to regularly air in London on BBC London, but regularly air in the Midlands on ITV Central, correct?

[JamesF]

Well I don't buy one any more because I always forget and I feel like I'm in the minority, particularly as I miss everything. It's definitely a habit that most people have yet to break, Cat. You've still got your pulse on UK culture for the time being.

For the record I loathe Michelle Connor. I couldn't stand it when she wrongly thought Steve was cheating on her and tried to throw him out of his own home! It's been very satisfying seeing her being given her marching orders.

The major thing you have to bear in mind is the breakdown of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland) and the fact that it is very England-centric. So something commisioned in England that's liable to be fairly general culturally will be shown universally. Things like "Pobol" and "River City" are supposed to be marketed towards their respective cultures, particularly "Pobol" which is filmed in the Welsh language.

Things have changed a lot since the mid 90s when "High Road" still had a daytime audience. Until that time, ITV was broken down into around 10-12 regional franchises. Programming was largely the same but outside of primetime or major networked daytime shows, the regions could schedule however they wanted. For instance Thames ITV might have been showing five year old episodes of "Sons and Daughters" at 15:00 while Central ITV had two year old episodes at 17:00.

Nowadays it's more streamlined. There is very very little deviation as the largest ITV companies, Granada and Carlton have bought everything else up.

With regard to your syndication question, programmes very rarely cross from one channel to another. Even if they are made by an independent production company they tend to have been commisioned by a channel who will hold onto the show. Things like talk shows become very ingrained in a channel's identity. So when you had Trisha Goddard hosting a talk show on ITV daytime and then jumping ship, when she took it to Five, the show had to have a very different format, name, look etc.

[Ben]

I didn't mean it like that, Cat. I know that most people still use one (James), otherwise there wouldn't be so many of them in circulation. I was just stating that I know a lot of people (me included) that doesn't buy/use one, and instead rely on the EPG.

My Family is now in it's 8th season! I don't get its appeal, but obviously millions do. There's another one out called, Life of Riley, which, judging by the promos, is equally horrendous.

Out of curiosity, were you more inclined to watch US TV because you're American, or just because that's what you preferred?

You're right, James... but I don't believe a show switching networks means they have to completely rebrand. A slight alteration to the name will do the trick. With regards to Trisha Goddard, that was her personal wishes to reformat the show, and give it a more sophisticated look. Telling human interest stories was what she wanted at ITV, but they wanted Jerry Springer-esque antics - a style that she loathed. But after a number of years at Five, she soon realized that "chav" characters brought in the ratings. I don't know why.

[Cat]

LOL, I was just teasing you. I used to buy TimeOut for its TV listings.

Life of Riley? That sounds dire. And this coming from somebody who used to watch Are You Being Served? on PBS when I was a kid. I guess it is the blandness of those shows I object to. I still long for something as inventive and funny as Blackadder.

Re: your last question, I really don't know. I just liked those shows. With Sunset Beach I was definitely jonesing for my US soap fix. And when I heard that it was an Aaron Spelling production, I was all over it. Charlie's Angels, Dynasty and 90210 were like mother's milk for me.

As for Buffy, at that time, the show was a really satisfying watch in terms of story and emotion. No other show really pulled me in the way BtVS did. People would talk about it at work and seemed a real cult hit in the UK. LOL, when it started to deteriorate (Seasons 5,6,7), it was actually quite hard to bear! But luckily US shows seemed to be on a creative upswing at the time so there were others to fall back on that really pushed the thrilling, resonant SLs. Big budgets must help -- it is clear that one exterior shot of Desperate Housewives, say, costs the equivalent of 15 Spooks episodes. Right now, I cannot get enough of Mad Men. I guess British TV does its Jane Austen adaptions and this would be our equivalent?

[Vee]

Britsoaps can be brilliant, and we could learn a lot from them. But I don't think American audiences would tolerate some of what they do - namely, hold onto visibly "real" actors who are not exactly young, beautiful or size zero but still talented. Also, they will kill anybody. What Eastenders did to the show matriarch, Pauline Fowler, still stuns me. I would blanch if that happened on a US soap.

ITA EE can be very good or very bad. What strikes me about that show, and the other British soaps, though, is that when a long-running character has a problem or personal flaw, it is something that stays with them or influences them in a very realistic, real-life way for years to come. On American soaps innate character flaws are usually much more surface, either disposed of quickly or trotted out occasionally. There is rarely anything that is not externalized in some way. But on EE, Phil Mitchell has human qualities, things some fans care about, but is still a violent criminal whose own family abuse constantly makes him revert back to terrorizing and beating women or resorting to a life of crime. For that, he lost his daughter. And Sharon Watts maintained a twisted, Oedipal relationship with her adoptive father Den for almost twenty years, long after his first "death" and it influenced the men she was with and the choices she made for years after. When Den's bio-son, Dennis, came down on her in a booze and pills-fueled rage a couple years back, and screamed "you're [30something] years old, you run your mum's pub, you dress like a widow...who are you mourning for?" And she screamed, "the man I love is dead!" And of course it was her father, and he wasn't dead. That was long-running character neuroses. It's something we don't see much of over here anymore.