Which soaps do you watch?

[Skylover]

Which soaps do you watch, which is your favourite and how do they compare?

 

I watch Neighbours, Home and Away, EastEnders, Days of Our Lives and occasionally Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten.

 

I don’t really like H&A anymore and am thinking of dropping it due to poor quality. EastEnders I tend to like in phases of years then a new producer comes in and ruins it and I tend to stop watching for years at a time. Neighbours is more consistent and I’ve watched that permanently since 2004. Days I only just started a few months back but it’s already one of my favourites. I didn’t realise but American soaps seem to be pros of the genre, perhaps because they started there? I wouldn’t have time to watch the others though and I find they don’t have the same appeal as Days. My only wish is they were on prime time and had better production values like Neighbours and EastEnders.

 

I’d like to watch GZSZ more permanently but it doesn’t seem very easy as there’s nowhere to download them like I player with EastEnders.

[Faulkner]

I watch Y&R maybe two or three days out of the week, but I check in on the other soaps when I have the chance more out of habit and curiosity. Y&R is the only show I have a deep attachment to since I've watched since childhood in the mid-to-late '80s. Most of the characters and actors (Nina, Dru, Jill, Mamie, HT/Victoria, Hope, Victor) I enjoyed are long gone, ruined, or sidelined. My watching got a bit more sparse after 1999 or so due to college or work obligations, and frankly the show just wasn't as compelling. But I suppose I didn't realize how good the early 2000s had been when the show *really* went off the rails circa 2005-07. 

 

As a lover of the genre, I've watched pretty much every U.S. soap that aired after 1987 except LOVING, which didn't air in my hometown. My mom watched Santa Barbara, ATWT, AMC, GL, and Y&R and later DAYS, and I knew all those shows well. OLTL during Gottlieb/Malone was an obsession, but GL was my favorite until 1993-94 when Nancy Curlee left and the Labines lured me over to GH. Then GH got bad and I went back to GL around the Annie/Reva drama. Then San Cristobel happened, and I just gave up.

 

I loved Hollyoaks around the John Paul/Craig story. I've also watched EastEnders and Corrie/Emmerdale to a far lesser extent. I'm not really that interested in the U.K. soaps at the moment, as there are just too many other things to watch these days that don't require a deep dive on Wikipedia.

[Skylover]

How did you find EastEnders, Hollyoaks, Coronation St and Emmerdale compared? I can't watch Coronation St, Hollyoaks or Emmerdale due to the working class nature and heavy Northern accents. (I know HO and ED have some characters who aren't working class but still don't relate). I find EastEnders less alienating as it's southern. I do love the early Coronation St episodes I've seen from about 1960-1980 so I suppose the characters from 1980 onwards have just been crap.

 

Do all American soaps feature such frequent back from the dead stories like Days? I love the camp feel of Days.

 

Have you never watched Australian soaps?

[victoria foxton]

Characters have been coming back from the dead since the early 1980's. On American soaps people come back from the dead all the time. A lot of Corrie i've seen online from the 80's thru 2000 is quite good. Somewhere around the mid 2000's. Corrie started doing dark depressing over the top stories. Watching the old Corrie i love it's humor. I started watching EE on my local PBS station in the mid 1990's. The EE i fell in love with is long gone. Both EE and Corrie are into telling over the top depressing tales. Both EE and Corrie have taken the worst elements of the American soaps. I could never get into Emmerdale. Emmerdale was the soap that started the over the top stories. I do wish the American soaps had the production values the British soaps have. I started watching soaps when they still had lavish high end production values. I hate the cheap sets. I've never seen an Aussie soap. Do you know of any good ones? My late mom watched the ABC soaps. Which were AMC, OLTL, GH, Edge, Loving. So i grew up with them. But i never really paid attention to them. Then at the age 11 in the summer of 1986 i started  watching  NBC's Days and SFT. I also watched OLTL. In late 87 i started watching GH. In the summer of 88 AMC. In 1989 i started checking out AW, ATWT and GL. I'm glad i discovered all these soaps when they were still good and firing on all cylinders. By the mid 1990's most of them were pale imitations of their former selves.

[Skylover]

 

Yes, Neighbours. It's my favourite soap. I think you'd really like it!

[victoria foxton]

Thanks Eddie

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[Skylover]

 

No worries, and if you have any questions about the show I know pretty much it's entire history  Though it's easier to follow than Days or EE for example.

[FrenchFan]

I try to watch most of the English-speaking soaps but it is time consuming. I often watch while doing many other things at night.

US: BB, DAYS, GH, YR

UK,: Corrie, Emmerdale, EastEnders, Hollyoaks, Doctors

Australia / New Zealand : Neighbours, Home & Away, Shortland Street

Ireland: Fair City

Scotland: RIver City

 

Never got into the South African soaps. Wish I could have a look at some more, maybe the German soaps but don't know if I can find them somewhere with English subtitles.

[Antoyne]

I watch Y&R daily, I recently got back into GH during the Jason story, and I JUST got back into DAYS in the last week or so after Higley pushed me away.

[Cheap21]

NONE! B&B was the last one and they lost me this past fall. I haven't looked back

[Soapsuds]

Days of our Lives

Young & The Restless- sometimes...not everyday

[Cruising Soaps]

Y&R, B&B, and Hollyoaks.

 

 

[All My Shadows]

None regularly since September 2011 when AMC ended on ABC. I feel as though they're a pointless investment. They'll never really satisfy me, and one day, they'll be gone, so why bother? Meanwhile, I'm watching old episodes on YouTube as diligently as ever, so it's not the genre itself that I'm over...

[beebs]

Currently just DAYS. I had been watching Y&R again from about late 2015 til about two months ago when Mal Young took over and just pressed fast-forward immediately. DAYS has been pretty solid to me, though I know I see a lot of gripes on the board, I've been thoroughly enjoying it (mostly).

 

Over the years, I've basically followed every soap on since 1997 other than Passions and ATWT. Gave up on the genre entirely in the early 2000s partly due to school and partly due to the deteriorating quality of the shows on the air, plus the fixation of the time on vacuous teens and their inane problems. Only really got back into it after I heard word of GL's cancellation.

Never really watched any foreign soaps other than Hollyoaks on occasion back in 2007-08, EastEnders for awhile back in 2011-12, then Goede TIjden, Slechte Tijden for a bit during their initial gay story around 2011-12 as well. 

Honestly, I would much rather watch the old stuff on YouTube than what's on now. There's a level of cohesiveness and intelligence that has been lost in the last 25 years in the soaps that there seems to be an absolute refusal to bring back. The excessive, oppressive conservative cloud over the genre is, to me, exactly what's killing it, particularly in North America. Even watching Theo's shooting on DAYS and I'm irritated by the fact it's more about JJ's guilt than anything else. I really want this genre to survive and thrive again, but they make it so damn hard!

[SFK]

When I'm off during the day, I'll watch the first half of Y&R, the first half of DOOL, and if I don't forget, switch back and forth to B&B.  There was a minute there where I watched B&B faithfully on the CBS app, once or twice I marathoned a week at a time.  Didn't have the patience for Y&R on the app, those ads start to get on my nerves and G-d forbid you accidentally tap to rewind or something and get sent into another ad.

 

I tried to give GH a chance last week but I'd flip to Wendy Williams or something and forget to check back.

 

I have been watching both episodes of The Doctors at 1am regularly. 

 

This is an old argument, but I am convinced that if all of the network soaps were 30 minutes, I'd watch them all, every day.  Especially if I could stream them during my train commute.