THERE was a time when the mere sight of the well-fed tabby on the Coronation Street pigeon loft was enough to excite a nation, prompting 20 million mums and dads to issue a ‘Shoosh!’ warning. And when the pub piano transported us into the EastEnders’ Queen Vic we delighted in the chance to see Angie and Den destroy each other, in such a beautifully constructed manner we hadn’t seen since Taylor and Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Or indeed, Taylor and Burton in real life.)
We all took readily to Brookside and its Scouse scallies and great writing by Jimmy McGovern. And the Australian soaps brought sunshine into our dim electric-lit living rooms. (And bikinis and budgie smugglers, of course.)
But we’re bored with soap, (or continuing drama as producers prefer). It’s going down the plughole, says BBC Radio 4 presenter Mark Lawson. The one-time soap fan claims the genre now faces “potentially fatal crises.”
Is he right? Viewing figures support the argument. EastEnders once pulled in 30 million for an episode. (Christmas Day, 1986). But in June this year it attracted just under 3 million. Coronation Street now pulls in just over 5 million, being beaten by Emmerdale.
So why are we switching off soaps? Lawson points to “a fundamental creative problem in which story arcs are becoming impossible to either write or act.” He’s dead right. When Coronation Street entered our lives in 1960 it was so reflective of northern life that creator Tony Warren could have been holding a mirror up in a street in his native Salford. It was kitchen sink film-sensibility condensed into half an hour a week. Shot through a hairnet and a camera lens smeared with milk stout foam it told real tales; of petty jealousies, wide boys and debates on social mores such as female promiscuity. “That Elsie Tanner is a tart.”
Nowadays, Corrie is rarely without a murder victim. Indeed, you are four times more likely to be murdered in Weatherfield than you are in Los Cabos, the Mexican city famed for drug gang killings. Up to last year, 32 characters have been killed in Corrie, 38 had heart attacks, 18 died in an accident and eight suffered bizarre deaths. Even teen angst soap Hollyoaks has featured more than 43 murders in a 20-year period.
Lawson references Gillian Taylforth’s EastEnders’ character Kathy Beale who has suffered “domestic abuse, forced adoption, fraud, car crashes, cancers, organ transplant and faked death.” And she has a greedy boy who’s put on far too much weight. The poor woman.
It’s all too much. And if viewers want murder and mayhem they can turn to the likes of Line of Duty or Netflix hits such as Ozark, which contain elements of melodrama. If they want smaller television, with personal, clever conflict dialogue they can turn to the likes of Nick Hornby’s State of the Union (Now on iPlayer.)
And if they want to wallow in relationship disasters who needs the melodrama surrounding Corrie’s ditsy cancer-stricken sewing machinist Sinead, or Andrea and Graham’s Emmerdale traumas when you can thrill to real-life deceit, subterfuge, pettiness and crushed egos? Love Island is now the go-to destination for heartbreak.
When a partner reveals desperation we come to love them less. It’s the same with soaps. When Corrie brings in Gandalf in the form of Ian McKellen to line up against Audrey Roberts the writing is on the wall. Lorraine Kelly’s arrival should have been reported to the Manchester Constabulary, for crimes against acting. And when Boris Johnson appeared in the Queen Vic, Danny Dyer should have given him a slap.
Soap needs to be real(ish). River City manages that fairly consistently – with around 400k viewers a week – although it was for too long murder/crime dependent.
But there is another reason why we are washing our hands of soap telly. Rival television such as Newsnight. You don’t think so? Tune in to most episodes and you’ll see tearful Speakers being manhandled, crowds screaming blue murder and shots of London streets featuring zombie figures running around, making muffled sounds about a zombie parliament. The stars of the show are also instantly recognisable: the grey-bearded man who looks like a retired geography teacher being ignored by everyone, the younger man with blond hair that’s on backwards who has the swagger of a Latin American dictator and loves reciting the Iliad in ancient Greek. Tonight’s episode will feature 11 courtroom judges staring intently at documents. It will cut to Holyrood revealing a room full of anxious faces, all with fingers tightly crossed. Each face suggesting a very different dream.
Who needs soap at all?
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