The "foreign soaps" topic

[JamesF]

The photos make the show look like a bit of a glamour soap...I always thought VL was the one with the glitz and the pretty people.

My soaps have been on fire this week. Coronation Street is hotting up for Tracy's murder trial and Sunday's episode is a double hander between her and Deirdre with her confessing the truth about killing Charlie. I also like Janice finding out about Leanne's descent into prostitution. Pretty sad stuff.

EastEnders has also been more watchable for me this week than it has been in years. Stella terrorising Ben, Peggy's little breakdown at her 65th birthday party about being old and the hilariously out of nowhere catfight between Stacey and Tanya.

And as for Neighbours...Stingray's death was heartbreaking. So tragic and very well done. All the music chosen for the episode was understated and fit perfectly. I had tears in my eyes throughout the whole thing.

[Manny]

I stopped watching Croatian soap "Forbidden Love"... Characters kept coming and going and it was so annoying.. and plus, most of stories became bad and boring... production was pretty much always pretty bad, but I could live with that if we had better stories.. lol

[Huntress]

Yes, VL is usually the most glamorous soap... but I only watch it once in a while. Like in the US with ABC vs. CBS vs. NBC, it's basically ARD vs. RTL here Although it's quite strange because except Marienhof, all soaps are produced by Grundy and therefore, they are very similar in its structure. VL is the one with the most cast changes, though, while UU and GZSZ have kept their cast pretty stable during the last five years. There are only 2 or 3 exits each year.

The good thing is that every cast member has a storyline and everyone can be seen in at least 10 episodes each month.

The longest running current cast members on each soap are:

GZSZ

01. Frank-Thomas Mende als Clemens Richter (05/1992-)

02. Lisa Riecken als Elisabeth Meinhart Daniel Buhr (05/1992-)

03. Hans Christiani as A.R. Daniel (05/1992-)

04. Wolfgang Bahro as Dr. Joachim "Jo" Gerner (02/1993-)

05. Daniel Fehlow as Leon Moreno (04/1996-05/1999; 04/2001-)

06. Felix von Jascheroff as John Bachmann (07/2001-)

07. Susan Sideropoulos as Verena Koch (03/2002-; guest in 2001)

08. Maike von Bremen as Sandra Lemke Ergün #2 (08/2002-)

09. Josephine Schmidt as Paula Rapf Bachmann (11/2002-)

10. Ulrike Frank as Katrin Flemming aka Gaby Galuba (12/2002-04/2003; 04/2004-)

Marienhof

01. Vikoria Brams as Inge Busch (10/1992-)

02. Gerd Udo Feller as Friedrich Dettmer #2 (01/1995-)

03. Nicole Belster-Boettcher as Sandra Behrens (02/1995-)

04. Wolgang Seidenberg as Frank Töppers (1995-)

05. Susanne Steidle as Regina Zirkowski (1996-)

06. Sven Thiemann as Charly Kolbe (1997-)

07. Christian Buse as Thorsten Fechner (1999-)

08. Erwin Aljukic as Frederik Neuhaus (1999-)

09. Alfonso Losa as Carlos Garcia (07/2000-)

10. Simon-Paul Wagner as Marlon Berger (09/2000-)

Unter uns

01. Holger Franke as Wolfgang Weigel (11/1994-)

02. Petra Blossey as Irene Weigel (11/1994-)

03. Isabell Hertel as Ute Kiefer Kern Weigel (02/1995-)

04. Imke Brügger as Rebecca Mattern Winter (07/1997-)

05. Milos Vukovic as Paco Weigel (04/2000-)

06. Ben Ruedinger as Till Weigel #2 (10/2000-)

07. Alexander Sholti as Björn Winter (02/2001-)

08. Stefan Bockelmann as Malte Winter (09/2001-)

09. Sarah Bogen as Lilith "Lili" Rose (11/2001-)

10. Jane Hempel as Sophie Himmel Eiler #2 (12/2001-)

Verbotene Liebe

01. Konrad Krauss as Arno Brandner (01/1995-)

02. Gabriele Metzger as Charlie Schneider (01/1995-)

03. Martina Servatius as Elisabeth Ryan Brandner (08/1999-)

04. Dominic Saleh-Zaki as Andi Fritzsche (10/2001-)

05. Verena Zimmermann as Nico von Lahnstein (10/2002-)

06. Ron Holzschuh as Bernd von Beyenbach (03/2003-)

07. Claudia Hiersche as Carla von Lahnstein (09/2003-)

08. Thomas Gumpert as Johannes von Lahnstein (09/2003-)

09. Wolfram Grandezka as Ansgar von Lahnstein (01/2004-)

10. Lars Korten as Leonard von Lahnstein (03/2004-)

They left and returned:

* Claudia Scarpatetti as Susanne Brandner (01/1995-09/1997; 03/2005-)

* Herbert Ulrich as Lars Schneider (10/2002-05/2005; 10/2006-)

On Alles was zählt the original cast is still intact after seven months on the air .

[Sylph]

Who's that guy Jed that died in an episode of EastEnders?

And what will happen to May/Rob/Dawn triangle?

[heatherwebber]

I get Eastenders about 5 weeks behind. I haven't seen Jed yet.

I have noticed the last few weeks they've started dividing the ominbus episodes into the first 3 and then end credits. Then they run the Friday episode right afterwards with separate credits. This started about the time Diederich Santer or whatever his name is took over as new producer. That was the week Sonia & Martin got written out.

[dannigold]

Diederick Santer is the new executive producer. Jed is a minor character who only appears in one episode.

[BingCherry]

Just curious about the German soaps... Which ones are the highest rated? Lowest rated? Most popular? Most critically acclaimed? Any behind the scenes info/scandals/etc.?

[Huntress]

The soap scene here is very different from the US. The audience is usually very passive and there are no big fanbases for a certain character, actor etc. There is hardly any press coverage. The actors are no "stars" in the media, usually they are seen as third-class-actors. Okay, some of the younger actors are really horrible - it was worse in the past -, but there are also very talented ones. GZSZ has won a few prizes over the years, for example one as the "most popular television show".

This is the current afternoon schedule for the eight major German networks.

The budgets for the soaps are quite large, though, because all the soaps air in the early evening and they are important trademarks for the networks. Every soap has a large outdoor set these days.

You also don't notice if there's a change behind the scenes. Storylines are planned one year in advance so every character has something to do. Last-minute changes only happen when a cast member is ill. In 1999, half of the cast of GZSZ became ill and they had to re-write a stupid epidemic storyline where only the healthy actors appeared in.

Every character gets a proper sent-off and there's no such thing as being "bumped to recurring". If a person is gone, they are likely to stay gone although there are of course some exceptions, for example Miriam Lahnstein as the evil Tanja von Anstetten on VL who has left several times and returned some months later. I remember that in 2001, three cast members on GZSZ were fired before their contract was up and there was buzz in the media because one actress sued either RTL or Grundy. She didn't win the trial, though.

Recasts rarely happen, only if the character is still needed. Usually these characters are rewritten when a recast happens, so they're basically becoming a whole new person. For example, from 2000 to 2002 Sandra on GZSZ was a teen !@#$%^&*] with a shopping addiction and a big interest in acting, but then Maike von Bremen stepped into the role and Sandra became a nice person, kind of the moral center of the show. In the last three years, there wasn't any recast on GZSZ.

The highest rated daily soap is GZSZ with 4.5 million viewers in average, followed by AWZ (3.0), VL (2.3), MH (2.2) and UU (2.2). Five years ago, GZSZ reached its highest rating ever with over 7 million viewers. In 2005, the daily soaps were joined by telenovelas. Because of their big success, most novelas basically became daily soaps because they were extended over their original episode order. The most successful one was "Verliebt in Berlin" (ViB) which was launched in February 2005, but since last summer the ratings have been constantly dropping when the title character Lisa was replaced after she found her happy end. ViB airs against AWZ and has now 2.1 million viewers. Last year twice as much people watched it.

The most successful telenovela right now is "Sturm der Liebe" ("Storm of Love") with 3.4 million viewers and a market share of 26.3 % in its timeslot.

I'm very happy right now, because today it was announced that AWZ will be renewed for another year. After a rough start last year, it has finally managed to become must-see-television.

[Manny]

Yeah, this is how it is in Croatia too...

I don't know about big budgets, but we get TONS of outdoor stuff... actually, whenever they need a scene in a park or scene on the street, they go to the park or on the street...

In 4 years that our soap is on, we had only one recast.

Characters come and go all the time...

They also air in the late afternoon or evening. Croatian telenovelas air at 6:30 PM I think and Croatian soap Forbidden Love airs at 7:45PM...

The problem with FL is that it airs opposite main News of the Day that are probably the most watched TV show in Croatia... but they still have good ratings... I believe around 30% of share...

[dannigold]

There has been some changes to the Eastenders production team in recent months.

Eastenders Credits October 2006

Series story producer - Brigie de courcy

Series story editor - Dominic Treadwell Collins

Story editor - Alexander Lamb

Senior editor - Sharon Batten

Script editor - Lorna Sheriff

Script Producer - Vicki Delow

Script supervisor - Dale Byrne

Series Script editor - Kay Sherwood

Series Consultant - Tony Jordan

Series Producer - Lorrainne Newman

Executive producer - Kate Harwood

Eastenders Credits March 2007

Series story producer - Brigie de courcy

Series story editor - Dominic Treadwell Collins

Story editor - Alexander Lamb and Gareth Lemon

Senior editor - Sarah Barton

Script editor - Richard Mewis

Script Producer - Vicki Delow

Script supervisor - Sally Brocklehurst

Series Script editor - Sharon Batten

Series Consultant - Tony Jordan

Series Producer - Lorrainne Newman

Executive producer - Diederick Santer

[Cat]

I'm wondering if US shows -- and soaps -- may be heading this way one day.

I read an article about a US Primetime show "Friday Night Lights"? It's set in Austin, Texas, and that's where they film it. They film it in real people's houses, outdoors for real, in diners in Austin, even at the local high school where a lot of it is set. Consequently, they save a ton of time and money because they don't need to really build any new sets and filming it is usually done using multiple cameras so they don't have to do as many takes.

(They also let the characters improvise outside the lines of the script, but that's another issue entirely).

I wonder if US soaps could save some money by perhaps adopting a few of those "documentary-style" methods?

I also wonder whether ratings for US "Daytime" soaps would improve if they screened them between 4-8pm as opposed to the 12.30-4pm block.

Anyhoo, sorry for going OT. Back to foreign soaps!

[Sylph]

Thanks for posting that. I've noticed some other ‘additions’: scriptwriters — Jeff Povey, Carly Andrews, Chris Parker, Laura Watson, Ann Marie di Mambro, Julie Wassmer, Tom Chaplin, Will Hutton; script editors — Phil Hunter, Caroline Ormerod.

[dannigold]

Jeff Povey, Carey Andrews, Chris Parker, Laura Watson, Ann Marie di Mambro and Julie Wassmer are not new scriptwriters. They have been at Eastenders for years. Anne Marie Di Mambro , is the lead writer on Casualty, so does not write frequently for Eastenders. Laura Watson used to be the script editor, under Louise Berridge's regime. Her position changed to script writer, when Kate Harwood took over in 2005. Carey Andrews used to be a storyliner under Mathew Robinson and John Yorke's reign as executive producer. In recent years she has been a scriptwriter for the series. Diederick Santer has brought in numerous new scriptwriters since he became exec producer.

[Sylph]

Thanks for the info. I didn't know that, although I coul've looked these people up in IMDb.

[Sylph]

Hey, can someone update the "goings on" on EastEnders? What's going on with that love triangle?

Is there soap press in the UK?