There’s been a few news reports recently about how soaps have lost touch with the real world. I don’t watch soaps anymore – I’ve never been a huge fan – but I find it amazing that people are only recently starting to come to this realization! Soaps are based around tight knit communities of people who all know each other; does that ever happen in the real world anymore?
Also, despite being based on just a few characters the tragedy/person ratio of soaps is huge. This is obviously to try and keep people entertained – and that’s fine because people don’t want to watch a boring TV show – but surely people don’t think that this is a reflection of reality?
The other thing I don’t like about most types of soaps is how depressing they are. I don’t understand the need to watch TV shows that are even more depressing than reality. If I’m going to watch something it needs to be either interesting or make me feel good.
Soaps like Eastenders just play on the fact that people care about the characters that they watch on the TV by constantly making bad things happen to them. I’m surprised people haven’t got bored of the same marriage-affair-death cycle that seems to be the case for all UK soaps.
I wish UK TV would take a look at some of the brilliant drama series that come out of the US!