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[From its originally having been sponsored by soap companies.]
Serialized melodramatic presentations on broadcast television of true-to-life circumstances centering around romance and family life and its problems and tragedies. Begun as 15-minute segments on radio in the 1930s, the presentations were affectionately named "soaps" (which later became "soap operas"), because they were sponsored by soap manufacturers, particularly Procter & Gamble. The creator of the format was a woman named Irna Phillips, who began the genre in Chicago in 1930 with "Painted Dreams," the story of an Irish widow and her family. The longest-running soap opera (actually the longest-running drama in broadcast history) is "Guiding Light," which began on radio in 1937 and continues today as a full-color one-hour drama on the CBS Network. Many famous actors and entertainers have made their way to stardom through the ranks of soap operas.
Today these dramas appear on daytime television on all networks, as well as some local stations, in at least three different languages, and are primarily sponsored by soap manufacturers and companies specializing in home-care products. Additionally, the soap opera format has been adapted for prime-time programming in shows such as Felicity and Melrose Place.
1.
A radio or television serial with stock characters in domestic dramas that are noted for being sentimental and melodramatic. For example, She just watches soap operas all day long. This term originated in the mid-1930s and was so called because the sponsors of the earliest such radio shows were often soap manufacturers.
2.
Real-life situation resembling one that might occur in a soap opera, as in She just goes on and on about her various medical and family problems, one long soap opera. [1940s]
For more information on soap opera, visit Britannica.com.
Soap Operas are serialized dramas that were presented, usually daily, first on radio and then on television. The name was derived from the fact that manufacturers of soaps and other household products, most notably Procter and Gamble, were frequent sponsors of these programs. The soap opera is broadcasting's unique contribution to Western storytelling art. Although serialized stories had existed prior to the soap opera in printed fiction, comic strips, and movies, none of these forms exhibited the durability of the soap opera. The Guiding Light, for example, started on radio in 1937 and moved to television in 1952. Still airing original episodes in 2002 after nearly seventy years, The Guiding Light is the longest story ever told in human history.
Credit for the first soap opera usually goes to Irna Phillips, who created Painted Dreams for WGN radio in Chicago in 1930. The first national soap was Betty and Bob, created by Frank and Anne Hummert for NBC radio in 1932. Both Phillips and the Hummerts provided a wide variety of soaps for network radio over the next several years; only Phillips, however, would make the transition to television. After many decades, the Phillips-created serials As the World Turns, The Guiding Light, and Days of Our Lives were still on the air.
Although broadcasting was an industry dominated by men for most of its early history, the soap opera was designed for women and women were frequently employed to create, produce, and write them. Besides Irna Phillips and Anne Hummert, other prolific soap opera artists included Elaine Carrington (Pepper Young's Family, Red Adams); Agnes Nixon (All My Children, One Life to Live); and Lee Phillip Bell (with her husband, William Bell, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful). As gender roles changed significantly in the latter half of the twentieth century, the principal audience for soap operas—women who were at home during the day—began to diminish. In the 1970s, many soap operas were redesigned to attract younger viewers and college students. By the 1980s, soap operas like General Hospital were achieving high ratings among these younger viewers as well as among men. While early soap stories focused almost exclusively on romance and domestic home life, from the mid-1970s soaps often borrowed from other genres, integrating glamorous on-location settings and even elements of science fiction. The soap operas of Agnes Nixon became known in the 1970s and 1980s for their frank depiction of social issues in stories about rape, abortion, infertility, depression, child abuse, AIDS, and a variety of other controversial topics.
The problematic future of the genre became clear in the 1980s with the introduction of the daytime talk and audience participation shows. A soap opera is expensive and labor intensive to produce, requiring a very large cast and a production schedule that runs five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. The daytime talk show is, by contrast, simple, inexpensive, and amenable to reruns. While the daytime talk show virtually knocked the game show out of the morning and afternoon network schedules, about a dozen soap operas remained on the air. Several long-running soaps have ceased production since 1980, however, and competition from cable has brought overall ratings of the genre down considerably.
The first soap opera on network television, Faraway Hill, ran on the Dumont network in 1946 as an evening series. As had been the case in radio, however, the TV soap quickly settled into the daytime schedule. It was not until ABC introduced Peyton Place in 1964 that a serious attempt to return the soap to prime time was launched. Like a daytime soap, Peyton Place ran multiple episodes per week (up to three); had a huge cast of over one hundred; and did not broadcast reruns, even during the summer. Despite the commercial success of the series, however, the idea was not imitated again for years. In 1978, Dallas (CBS, 1978–1991) ushered in the era of the prime-time soap opera. Dallas employed multiple ongoing story lines and end-of-episode cliffhangers and, within a few years, became the most-watched series on TV. More prime-time soap operas were introduced over the next few years, including Knots Landing (CBS, 1979–1993), Dynasty (ABC, 1981–1989), and Falcon Crest (CBS, 1981–1990). Although the prime-time soap had begun to wane by the 1990s, its influence was felt in nearly all genres of fictional television series. Before the advent of the prime-time soap, most series episodes were totally self-contained, with little or no reference to events that had happened in previous episodes. Since then, most series have employed some continuing elements from episode to episode.
The soap opera has also become a significant presence on cable. In 2000, Disney/ABC introduced SoapNet, a channel devoted to reruns of daytime and prime-time serials, and another soap channel was expected from Columbia TriStar Television. The Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo offer imported soap operas, telenovelas, which play to very large audiences. Even MTV, the youth-oriented cable channel, introduced its own soap opera, Undressed, in 1999.
Bibliography
Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment. 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977.
Worlds without End: The Art and History of the Soap Opera. New York: Abrams, 1997.
A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction, usually broadcast on television or radio. Programs described as soap operas have existed as an entertainment long enough for audiences to recognize them simply by the term soap. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers such as Procter and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Pepsodent as the show's sponsors. [1] These early radio serials were broadcast in weekday daytime slots when mostly housewives would be available to listen, thus the shows were aimed at and consumed by a predominantly female audience. [1]
The term soap opera has at times been generally applied to any romantic serial,[1] but is also used to describe the more naturalistic, unglamorous evening, prime-time drama serials of the UK such as Coronation Street.[2] What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is the open-ended nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. The defining feature that makes a program a soap opera is that it, according to Albert Moran, is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode".[3] Soap opera stories run concurrently, intersect, and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different concurrent story threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another, or may run entirely independent of each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines but not always all of them. There is some rotation of both storylines and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely "wrap things up" storywise, and generally avoid bringing all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends there are always several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes invariably end on some sort of cliffhanger.
Evening soap operas sometimes differ from this general format and are more likely to feature the entire cast in each episode, and to represent all current storylines in each episode. Additionally, evening soap operas and other serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end of season cliffhanger.
The main characteristics that define soap operas are "an emphasis on family life, personal relationships, sexual dramas, emotional and moral conflicts; some coverage of topical issues; set in familiar domestic interiors with only occasional excursions into new locations".[2] Fitting in with these characteristics, most soap operas follow the lives of a group of characters who live or work in a particular place, or focus on a large extended family. The storylines follow the day-to-day activities and personal relationships of these characters. "Soap narratives, like those of film melodramas, are marked by what Steve Neale has described as 'chance meetings, coincidences, missed meetings, sudden conversions, last-minute rescues and revelations, deus ex machina endings' ". These elements may be found across the gamut of soap operas, from EastEnders to Dallas.[4]
In many soap operas in particular daytime serials in the United States, the characters are generally more attractive, seductive, glamorous, and wealthy than the typical person watching the show. This is true to a lesser extent in soap operas from Australia and the United Kingdom, which largely focus on more everyday characters and situations and are frequently set in working class environments.[5] Many Australian and UK soap operas explore social realist storylines such as family discord, marriage breakdown, or financial problems. Both UK and Australian soap operas feature comedy elements, often by way of affectionate comic stereotypes such as the gossip or the grumpy old man, presented as relatively harmless disasters as a sort of comic foil to the emotional turmoil that surrounds them. This diverges from US soap operas where such comedy is rare.[3] UK soap operas frequently make a claim to presenting "reality" or purport to have a "realistic" style.[6] UK soap operas also frequently foreground their geographic location as a key defining feature of the show while depicting and capitalising on the exotic appeal of the stereotypes connected to the location. So EastEnders focuses on the tough and grim life in London's east end; Coronation Street invokes Manchester and its characters exhibit the stereotypical characteristic of "Northern straight talking". [7]
Romance, secret relationships, extra-marital affairs, and genuine love have been the basis for many soap opera storylines. In US daytime serials the most popular soap opera characters, and the most popular storylines, often involved a romance of the sort presented in paperback romance novels. Soap opera storylines sometimes weave intricate, convoluted, and sometimes confusing tales of characters who have affairs, meet mysterious strangers and fall in love, and who commit adultery, all of which keeps audiences hooked on the unfolding story twists. Crimes such as kidnapping, rape, and even murder may go unpunished if the perpretrator is to be retained in the ongoing story.
Australian and UK soap operas also feature a significant proportion of romance storylines. In Russia, most popular soap operas (though most of them are serialized) explore the "romantic quality" of criminal and/or oligarch life.
In soap opera storylines, previously-unknown children, siblings, and twins (including the evil variety) of established characters often emerge to upset and reinvigorate the set of relationships examined by the series. Unexpected calamities disrupt weddings, childbirths, and other major life events with unusual frequency. Much like comic books—another popular form of linear storytelling pioneered in the US during the 20th Century—a character's death is not guaranteed to be permanent without an on-camera corpse, and sometimes not even then. For example, the death of Dr. Taylor Forrester on The Bold and the Beautiful seemed permanent as she had flatlined on-camera and even had a funeral. But when actress Hunter Tylo returned in 2005, the show retconned the "flatlining" with the revelation that Taylor had actually gone into a coma.
In series recorded and broadcast live, or recorded live to tape with limited time for re-takes as many weekday serials of the 2000s are, stunts and complex physical action are largely absent. Such story events take place offscreen and are referred to in dialogue instead of being shown. This is because stunts or action scenes (such as a car accident) are difficult to adequately depict visually without multiple takes and post production editing. A convincing fight scene usually requires multiple takes, and multiple camera angles.
In addition, the musical soundtrack used for a soap opera uses a style that instantly identifies it as belonging to soap operas. Soap operas aired during the golden age of radio usually used organs to produce most of their music (because they were cheaper than full orchestras). The organists from the radio serials moved over to television, and were heard on some serials as late as the 1970s.
Like the storylines themselves, soap opera soundtracks were overblown and melodramatic. Stereotypical use of music in soap opera which has been parodied several times, is a single, blaring, organ chord being used to underscore a shocking revelation delivered by a character in dialogue. Organ music was abandoned by the serials during the 1960s and 1970s to be replaced by pre-recorded library music, mostly created by synthesizers. Other soap operas, especially British and recent Australian ones, frequently use pop music in their soundtrack; however UK soap operas, with their realist tone, rarely feature any non-diegetic music at all, and the popular music backing is depicted as being played on the radio within the scene. Australian serial Neighbours has in the mid-2000s used popular songs on a soundtrack, playing grabs of music across scene transitions. Pop music is less frequent on the US serials, as the royalties needed to be paid to artists would cost too much for the production companies in charge of making the serials.
The American soap opera Guiding Light started as a radio drama in January 1937 and subsequently transferred to television. With the exception of several years
in the late 1940s when Irna Phillips was in dispute with
Due to the shows' longevities, it is not uncommon for multiple actors to play a single character over the span of many years. It is also not uncommon for a single actor to play several characters on other shows over the years. Actors such as Robin Mattson, Roscoe Born and Michael Sabatino have played no fewer than six soap roles. On the other hand, a number of actors have remained in their roles for decades. Helen Wagner, who has played Hughes family matriarch Nancy Hughes on As the World Turns since its debut on April 2 1956, is in the Guinness Book of World Records[1] as the actor with the longest uninterrupted performance in a single role. (Two of Wagner's ATWT cast-mates, Eileen Fulton and Don Hastings who play Lisa Miller Grimaldi and Dr. Bob Hughes, respectively, have each been in their roles nearly as long, both having joined the show in 1960.) In General Hospital, Rachel Ames has been playing Audrey Hardy since 1964, and in All My Children, Susan Lucci has played the same role, Erica Kane, since the show's debut in January 1970. Though as actors transition between soap roles, it is not uncommon nowadays to be dropped from contract status to recurring status, a part of contract negotiations which is almost completely unique to U.S. soap operas.
In the U.S., the shows purely known in the vernacular as soap operas are broadcast during daytime. In the beginning, the serials were broadcast as fifteen-minute installments each weekday. In 1956, the first half-hour soap operas debuted, and all of the soap operas broadcast half-hour episodes by the end of the 1960s. When the soap opera hit a fever pitch in the 1970s, popular demand had most of the shows, one by one, expanded to an hour in length (one show, Another World, even expanded to ninety minutes for a short time). More than half of the serials (and all of the pre-'80s hour-long serials on the air today) expanded to the new time format by 1980. Today, eight out of the nine American serials air sixty-minute episodes each weekday. Only The Bold and the Beautiful airs for 30 minutes.
Also in the early days, soap operas were broadcast live, creating what many at the time regarded as a feeling similar to that of a stage play. (As nearly all soap operas were filmed at that time in New York, a number of soap actors were also accomplished stage actors, who performed live theatre during breaks from their soap roles.) In the 1960s and 1970s, shows such as General Hospital, Days of our Lives, and The Young and the Restless began taping in Los Angeles, and made the West Coast a viable alternative to New York-produced soap operas, which were becoming more costly to perform. By the early 1970s, nearly all soap operas had transitioned to being taped, with As the World Turns and The Edge of Night being the last to make the switch in 1975.
Port Charles used the practice of running 13-week "story arcs", in which the main events of the arc are played out and wrapped up over the 13 weeks, although some storylines did continue over more than one arc. According to the 2006 Preview issue of Soap Opera Digest, it was briefly discussed that all ABC shows might do telenovela arcs, but this was rejected.
Many soap operas, in the beginning of television, found their niches in telling stories in certain environments. The Doctors and General Hospital, in the beginning, told stories almost exclusively from inside the confines of a hospital. As the World Turns dealt heavily with Chris Hughes's law practice and the travails of his wife Nancy who, when she tired of being "the loyal housewife" in the 1970s, became one of the first older women on the serials to become a working woman. Guiding Light dealt with Bert Bauer (Charita Bauer) and her endless marital troubles. When her status moved to that of the caring mother and town matriarch, her children's marital troubles were then put on display. Search for Tomorrow told the story, for the most part, through the eyes of one woman only: the heroine, Joanne (Mary Stuart). Even when stories revolved around other characters, she was almost always a main fixture in their storylines. Days of our Lives first told the stories of Dr. Tom Horton and his steadfast wife Alice. In later years, the show branched out and told the stories of their five children.
In contrast to these shows was Dark Shadows (1966-1971) which featured supernatural characters and dealt with fantasy and horror storylines. Its characters included the vampire Barnabas Collins, the witch Angelique, and various ghosts and goblins, both friendly and malevolent.
Primetime serials were just as popular as those in daytime. The first real prime time soap opera was ABC's Peyton Place (1964-1969), based in part on the original 1957 movie (which was itself taken from the 1956 novel). The popularity of Peyton Place prompted rival network CBS to spin off popular As the World Turns character Lisa Miller Grimaldi into her own evening soap opera entitled Our Private World (originally titled "The Woman Lisa" in its planning stages) in 1965. Our Private World ended in the fall and the character of Lisa returned to As The World Turns.
The structure of the Peyton Place with its episodic plots and long-running story arcs would set the mold for the prime time serials of the 1980s when the format reached its pinnacle.
The successful prime time serials of the 1980s included Dallas, Dynasty, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest. These shows frequently dealt with wealthy families and their personal and big-business travails. Common characteristics were sumptuous sets and costumes, the presence of at least one glamorous bitch-figure in the cast of characters, and spectacular disaster cliffhanger situations. Unlike daytime serials which where shot on video in a studio using the multicamera setup, these evening series were shot on film using a single camera setup and featured much location-shot footage, often in picturesque locales. Dallas, its spin-off Knots Landing, and Falcon Crest all initially featured episodes with self-contained stories and specific guest stars who appeared in just that episode. Each story would be completely resolved by the end of the episode and there were no end-of-episode cliffhangers. After the first couple of seasons all three shows changed their story format to that of a pure soap opera with interwoven ongoing narratives that ran over several episodes. Dynasty featured this format throughout its run.
The soap opera's distinctive open plot structure and complex continuity also began to be increasingly incorporated into major American prime time television programs. The first significant drama series to do this was Hill Street Blues. This series, produced by Steven Bochco, featured many elements borrowed from soap operas such as an ensemble cast, multi-episode storylines and extensive character development over the course of the series. It and the later Cagney & Lacey overlaid the police series formula with ongoing narratives exploring the personal lives and interpersonal relationships of the regular characters.[8] The success of these series prompted other drama series and situation comedy shows such as St. Elsewhere to incorporate soap opera style stories and story structure to varying degrees. The legacy continues in more recent series such as The West Wing and Friends.
The prime time soap operas and drama series of the 1990s, such as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and Dawson's Creek, focused more on younger characters. In the 2000s, ABC began to revitalize the primetime soap opera format by premiering shows such as Alias, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, and October Road. These shows managed to appeal to wide audiences not only because of their high melodrama but also because of the humor injected into the scripts and plot lines. In the fall of 2007, many new primetime soaps will be premiering on U.S. television such as "Dirty Sexy Money".
For several decades US daytime soap operas concentrated on family and marital upsets, legal dramas and romances. The action rarely left the interior settings within the fictional, medium-sized Midwestern towns in which the shows were set. Exterior shots, once a rarity, were slowly incorporated into the series Ryan's Hope. Unlike many earlier serials which were set in fictional towns, Ryan's Hope was set in real location, New York City, and outside shoots were used to give the series greater authenticity. The first exotic location shoot was made by All My Children, to St. Croix in 1978. Many other soap operas planned lavish storylines after seeing the success of the All My Children shoot. Another World went to St. Croix in March 1980 to culminate a long-running storyline between popular characters Mac, Rachel and Janice. Search for Tomorrow taped for two weeks in Hong Kong in 1981, and later that year some of the cast and crew ventured to Jamaica to tape a love consummation storyline between the characters of Garth and Kathy.
During the 1980s, perhaps as a reaction to the evening drama series that were gaining high ratings, daytime serials began to incorporate action and adventure storylines, more big-business intrigue, and featured an increased emphasis on youthful romance and began developing supercouples. One of the first and most popular supercouples was Luke Spencer and Laura Webber in General Hospital. Luke and Laura helped to attract both male and female fans. Even Elizabeth Taylor was a fan and at her own request was given a guest role in Luke and Laura's wedding episode. Luke and Laura's popularity led to other soap producers striving to reproduce this success by attempting to create supercouples of their own. With increasingly bizarre action storylines coming into vogue Luke and Laura saved the world from being frozen, brought a mobster down by finding his black book in a Left-Handed Boy Statue, and helped a Princess find her Aztec Treasure in Mexico. Other soap operas attempted similar adventure storylines, often featuring footage shot on location - frequently in exotic locales.
During the 1990s, the mob, action and adventure stories fell out of favour with producers due to overall lower ratings for daytime soap operas and the resultant budget cuts. In the 1990s soap operas were no longer able to go on expensive location shoots overseas as they had in the 1980s. In the 1990s soap operas increasingly focused on younger characters and social issues, such as Erica Kane's drug addiction on All My Children, the re-emergence of Viki Lord's Multiple Personality Disorder on One Life to Live, and Katherine Chancellor's alcoholism on The Young and the Restless. Other social issues included many forms of cancer, AIDS, homophobia, and racism.
Perhaps to fill the niche, some newer shows have incorporated supernatural and science fiction elements into their storylines. One of the main characters in US soap opera Passions is Tabitha Lenox, a 300-year-old witch. Port Charles has featured a vampire character. Frequently these characters are isolated in one of the ongoing story threads to allow a fan to ignore them if they do not like that element.
Modern U.S. daytime soap operas largely stay true to the original soap opera format. The duration and format of storylines and the visual grammar employed by US daytime serials set them apart from soap operas in other countries and from evening soap operas. Stylistically, UK and Australian soap operas, which are usually produced for evening timeslots, fall somewhere in-between US daytime and evening soap operas. Similar to US daytime soap operas, UK and Australian serials are shot on videotape, and the cast and storylines are rotated across the week's episodes so that each cast member will appear in some but not all episodes. However, UK and Australian soap operas move through storylines at a faster rate than daytime serials, making them closer to US evening soap operas in this regard.
American soap operas since the 1980s have shared many common visual elements that set them apart dramatically from other shows:
In the United Kingdom, soap operas are one of the most popular genres, most being broadcast during prime time. Most UK soap operas focus on working-class communities. The three most popular soaps are EastEnders, Coronation Street, and Emmerdale, the three of which are consistently the highest rated shows on British television. Christmas 1986, EastEnders generated the highest-rated soap episode ever, with 30.15 million viewers (consider that in 2007, the UK has approximately 54 million television sets). The 1986 episode was also the highest-rated program in UK television for the 1980s, comparable to the records set by the 1970s splashdown of Apollo 13 (28.6 million viewers), and Princess Diana's funeral in the 1990s (32.1 million viewers).[9]
The three soaps are known as the "flagship" soaps, as they are the main programmes for the BBC and ITV, so much so that poor ratings for the soaps usually brings along with it questions about the channel associated with it. The soaps are so popular that they are never scheduled against each other except in the case of extended episodes and omnibuses or another extreme circumstance, and this always attracts media attention as to which soap will win if the flagships go head-to-head.
Soap operas began on radio and consequently were associated with the BBC. The BBC continues to broadcast the world's longest-running radio soap, The Archers, on BBC Radio 4, which has been running nationally since 1951. It continues to attract over five million listeners, or roughly 25% of the radio listening population of the UK at that time of the evening.
In the 1960s Coronation Street revolutionised UK television and quickly became a British institution. Other soap operas of the 1960s included Emergency Ward 10 (ITV), and on the BBC Compact (about the staff of a women's magazine) and The Newcomers (about the upheaval caused by a large firm setting up a plant in a small town). However none of these came close to making the same impact as Coronation Street.
During the 1960s Corrie's main rival was Crossroads, a daily serial that began in 1964 and was broadcast by ITV in the early evening. Crossroads was set in a Birmingham motel and while the series was popular, its purported low technical standard and bad acting was much mocked. By the 1980s its ratings had begun to decline and several attempts to revamp the series through cast changes and later, expanding the focus from the motel to the surrounding community, were unsuccessful, and Crossroads was cancelled in 1988.
. A later rival to Corrie was ITV's Emmerdale Farm (later renamed Emmerdale) which began in 1972 in a daytime slot and had a rural Yorkshire setting. Increased viewing figures saw Emmerdale being moved to a prime-time slot in the 1980s. When Channel 4 began in 1982 it launched its own soap, the Liverpool based Brookside, which over the next decade re-defined the UK television soap. In 1985, the BBC's London based soap opera EastEnders debuted and was a near instant success with viewers and critics alike. Critics talked about the downfall of Coronation Street, but this was put to rest in 1994 when the two serials were scheduled opposite each other, with Corrie winning handily. For the better part of ten years, the show has shared the number one position with Coronation Street, with varying degrees of difference between the two.
Daytime soap operas were unknown until the 1970s because there was virtually no daytime television in the UK. ITV introduced General Hospital, which later transferred to a prime time slot, and Scottish Television had Take the High Road, which lasted for over twenty years. Later, daytime slots were filled with an influx of older Australian soap operas such as The Young Doctors, The Sullivans, Sons and Daughters A Country Practice, Richmond Hill and eventually, Neighbours and Home and Away. These achieved significant levels of popularity. Neighbours and Home and Away were moved to early-evening slots and the UK soap opera boom began in the late 1980s. Later, 1992 saw the BBC launch Eldorado to alternate with EastEnders but it only lasted a year; however, this failure did not stop the ever-increasing prominence that soap operas would have in UK schedules.
During the 1980s ITV acquired the long-running Australian soap Prisoner which was screened around the country in differing slots usually around 11pm. The series was immensely successful and led to it being repeated after the series had reached its conclusion in the Midlands. Rival network Five also acquired repeat rights for a full rerun of the series, starting in 1997.
In 1995 Channel 4 introduced Hollyoaks, a soap with a youth focus. Brookside ended in November 2003, leaving Hollyoaks as the channel's flagship serial. When Five began in March 1997 it came with its own soap opera, Family Affairs, which debuted as a five-days-a-week soap. In 2001 a new version of Crossroads was produced by Carlton Television for ITV, featuring a mostly new cast, but it did not achieve satisfactory ratings and was cancelled in 2003. In 2001 ITV also launched a new early-evening serial entitled Night and Day, however this series too attracted low viewing figures and after being shifted to a late night time slot was cancelled in 2003. Family Affairs, which was broadcast opposite the racier Hollyoaks, never achieved significantly high viewing figures leading to several dramatic revamps of the cast and marked changes in style and even location over its run. This eventually saw the show gain a larger fan base and by 2004 the series won its first awards, however Family Affairs was nevertheless cancelled in late 2005.
UK soap operas for many years usually only aired two nights a week. The exception was the original Crossroads, which began as a five days a week soap opera in the 1960s, but was later reduced. In 1989, things started to change when Coronation Street began airing three times a week (later expanding further to four in 1996), a trend which was soon followed by rival EastEnders in 1994 and Emmerdale in 1997. Family Affairs debuted as a five-days-a-week soap in 1997 and regularly ran five episodes a week its entire run. The imported Neighbours screens as new five episodes a week, being shown once at 1:40pm and repeated at 5:35pm on BBC One each week day.
Currently Coronation Street (which began screening two episodes on Monday nights in 2002) and Hollyoaks both produce five episodes a week, while EastEnders screens four. In 2004 Emmerdale began screening six episodes a week.
Today's UK soap operas are mainly shot on videotape in the studio using a multicamera setup. However UK soap operas feature a proportion of outdoors shot footage in each episode - usually shot on a purpose-built outdoor set that represents the community the soap focuses on.
| Character | Actor | Soap Opera | Duration |
| Phil Archer | Norman Painting | The Archers (radio) | 1950, 1951- |
| Ken Barlow | William Roache | Coronation Street | 1960- |
| Emily Bishop | Eileen Derbyshire | Coronation Street | 1961- |
| Betty Williams | Betty Driver | Coronation Street | 1969- |
| Rita Sullivan | Barbara Knox | Coronation Street | 1964, 1972- |
| Deirdre Barlow | Anne Kirkbride | Coronation Street | 1972- |
| Gail Platt | Helen Worth | Coronation Street | 1974- |
| Vera Duckworth | Liz Dawn | Coronation Street | 1974-2007 |
| Audrey Roberts | Sue Nicholls | Coronation Street | 1979- |
| Jack Sugden | Clive Hornby | Emmerdale | 1980- |
| Jack Duckworth | William Tarmey | Coronation Street | 1979, 1981- |
| Alan Turner | Richard Thorp | Emmerdale | 1982- |
| Bet Lynch | Julie Goodyear | Coronation Street | 1966, 1970-1995, 2002, 2003 |
| Seth Armstrong | Stan Richards | Emmerdale | 1978-2003, 2004 |
| Kevin Webster | Michael Le Vell | Coronation Street | 1983- |
| Albert Tatlock | Jack Howarth | Coronation Street | 1960-1984 |
| Hilda Ogden | Jean Alexander | Coronation Street | 1964-1987, 1990 |
| Annie Walker | Doris Speed | Coronation Street | 1960-1983 |
| Ian Beale | Adam Woodyatt | EastEnders | 1985- |
| Annie Sugden | Sheila Mercier | Emmerdale | 1972-1994, 1995, 1996 |
| Pauline Fowler | Wendy Richard | EastEnders | 1985-2006 |
| Sally Webster | Sally Whittaker | Coronation Street | 1986- |
| Pat Evans | Pam St. Clement | EastEnders | 1986- |
| Eric Pollard | Christopher Chittell | Emmerdale | 1986- |
Australia has had quite a number of well known soap operas, some of which have gained cult followings in the UK and other countries. The majority of Australian television soap operas are produced for early evening or evening timeslots. They usually produce two or two-and-a-half hours of new material each week, either arranged as four or five half-hour episodes a week, or two one-hour episodes. Stylistically they most closely resemble UK soap operas in that they are nearly always shot on videotape, mainly in the studio using a multicamera setup. The original Australian serials were shot entirely in the studio. During the 1970s, occasional filmed inserts were used to incorporate outdoor-shot sequences in soap operas. Outdoor shooting later became commonplace and starting in the late 1970s it became standard practice that there will be some location-shot footage in each episode of any Australian soap opera, often to capitalise on the attractiveness and exotic nature of these locations for international audiences. [10] Most Australian soap operas focus on a mixed age range of middle-class characters and will regularly feature a range of locations where the various, disparate, characters can meet and interact, such as the café, the surf club, the wine bar, or the school.[10]
The genre began in Australia, as in other countries, on radio. One such radio serial, Big Sister, featured actor Thelma Scott in the cast and aired nationally for five years from 1942. Probably the best known Australian radio serial was Blue Hills which ran from 1949 to 1976. With the advent of Australian television in 1956 daytime television serials followed. The first Australian television soap opera was Autumn Affair (1958). Each episode of this serial was fifteen minutes and it screened each weekday on the Seven Network. The series failed to secure a sponsor and ended in 1959 after a run of 156 episodes. This was followed by The Story of Peter Grey (1961). Again this was a Seven Network series screened weekdays in a daytime slot, with each episode fifteen minutes in duration. The Story of Peter Grey had a run of 164 episodes.
The first successful wave of Australian evening soap operas started in 1967 with Bellbird produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This rural-based serial screened in an early evening slot in fifteen minute installments and was a moderate success but built-up a consistent and loyal viewer base, especially in rural areas, and enjoyed a ten-year run. Motel (1968) was Australia's first half-hour soap opera. Screened in a daytime slot the series had a short run of 132 episodes.
The first big soap opera hit in Australia was the sex-melodrama Number 96 which began in March 1972, screening on Network Ten in a nighttime slot. Number 96 brought such rarely explored topics as homosexuality, adultery, drug use, rape-within-marriage and racism into Australian living rooms en masse. The series became famous for its sex scenes and nudity and for its comedy characters, many of whom became cult heroes in Australia. By 1973 Number 96 had become Australia's highest-rating show. In 1974 the sexed-up antics of Number 96 prompted the creation of The Box, which rivaled it in terms of nudity and sexual situations and screened in a nighttime slot. Produced by Crawford Productions, many critics considered The Box to be a more slickly produced and better written show than Number 96, and in its first year it was extremely popular. Meanwhile in 1974 the Reg Grundy Organisation created its first soap opera, and significantly Australia's first teen soap opera,
