"I don't think
soaps should think in terms of how much further we can go any
more. The preoccupation with the next big storyline has made British
soaps caricature themselves."
In the
soap world, the real drama is off-screen: their plots just don't
wash with viewers
By
Paul Vallely
Independent
10 August 2002
They've tried
axing producers, giving scriptwriters the boot and ruthlessly killing
off the characters but to no avail. The British TV soap opera seems
to be in terminal decline.
Viewing figures
for Coronation Street, the nation's premier soap for the past 41
years, have plummeted by two million during the past year. Three
times last month, its audience fell below nine million. The others
are not far behind. In the past five years, the BBC's EastEnders
and Neighbours have each lost three million viewers, while Channel
4's Brookside - that once set out to be the antidote to the other
soaps - has had its audience halved to less than two million.
All this is
despite the out-break of incest, rape, murder, abduction, grave
robbing, explosions, drug addiction, prostitution, paedophilia and
even a crazed internet stalker with which the rapidly turning-over
programme makers have tried to titillate their everyday stories
of ordinary folk.
This is serious
stuff. It has begun to hit the advertising. A 30 second ad in ITV's
Coronation Street now costs £20,000 less than it did five
years ago a 25 per cent drop in real terms.
In part, it
is a reflection of the general problems that terrestrial television
is having to contend with since the advent of cable and satellite.
ITV last month had its worst viewing figures on record. But it is
particularly acute in the world of the soaps, which now take up
26 hours weekly programming.
Dissatisfaction
with soaps can be seen in a number of quarters. Viewers are not
just drifting, they are protesting. Fans of the countryside soap
Emmerdale recently shut down one of its biggest internet sites complaining
they were disgusted by the show's increasingly sleazy storylines.
The critics'
knives are also out and the Royal Television Society refused to
shortlist Coronation Street for the "best soap" category
in its awards this year, on the grounds of the perceived low quality.
The Broadcasting
Standards Commission, earlier this year, criticised the increasingly
sensational and salacious nature of soap storylines that were unsuitable
for viewing before the 9pm watershed, when they are all aired. It
was particularly critical of the violent nature of the EastEnders'
Christmas Day edition that contained scenes of domestic violence.
Staff at Coronation
Street were particularly incensed when EastEnders subsequently swept
the board at the British Soap Awards and every single clip shown
at the presentation ceremony was, in the words of one Granada insider
"someone screaming, rowing, being beaten up it was all
violence, death and mayhem".
All that is
a long way from the high-flown claim just three years ago by the
BBC's head of drama series, Mal Young, who had spoken in the Huw
Weldon Memorial Lecture about the ability of successful soaps to
unite society. "They have become our virtual communities, doing
more to break down social and class boundaries than any government
leader could ever do," he said.
But clearly
the viewer can have too much of a good thing. Last year, Emmerdale
became the first primetime soap to run five times a week. EastEnders
followed Coronation Street's lead by adding a fourth weekly episode
and senior BBC figures say a fifth weekly EastEnders is inevitable.
The result
seems to have saturated the market. Lorna Cowan, who edits All About
Soap, a magazine aimed at teenage soap addicts, may insist that
more people still watch soaps than any other kind of programme.
"We haven't
run a Corrie cover for five weeks because the programme just isn't
as popular with young people as some other soaps," she says.
"But even so it gets more viewers most days than Big Brother
did at its peak and everyone acclaimed that a tremendous success.
It's all relative."
But according
to Steven Murphy, editor of Inside Soap: "The extra episodes
make people feel that it doesn't matter as much if they miss one.
They dip in and out more."
It has all
had another effect. Lord Dubs, the chairman of the Broadcasting
Standards Commission, says the chase for ratings has influenced
the content of soaps, making them more sensational. As a result,
the inhabitants of the six houses of Brookside have been subjected
to an onslaught of rape, incest, sieges, a burial beneath the patio
and a bizarre cult not to mention TV soaps' first lesbian
kiss.
Coronation
Street has had the first transsexual. EastEnders has had a shooting,
an exploding car and an attempted murder. Next week, Emmerdale will
have an exploding lorry. All of which undermines the old notion
that soaps work best when they have characters their viewers care
about.
That has been
the particular problem of Coronation Street. It was peopled by homely
folksy types whose characters did not sit easily with hard-edged
violence.
It had the
kind of tone and humour that had been developed by writers like
the one who, before his three-month writing stint came round, would
spend a fortnight in the buses, shops and pubs of Manchester writing
down all the funny lines he heard. Sensation injected into such
a world took on the tone of daft melodrama. And attempts to keep
up with the dramatic agendas of the other soaps undermined the warmth
and humour that had characterised its population.
A series that
had depended on the strength of its characters great double
acts through the decades like Stan and Hilda Ogden, Derek and Mavis
Wilton, Reg and Maureen Holdsworth, Curly and Raquel Watts
could not cope with a gear shift into becoming a show driven by
dramatic storylines. "They tried to make it like the other
soaps, with big issues and campaigns," said one insider, "whereas
what we want from Corrie is a nostalgic view of how we'd like to
think of life in the north of England".
Belatedly,
there are signs that Granada understands that. It has brought back
the Street's old executive producer, Carolyn Reynolds, who has instructed
that it is to become much more character-driven.
Stephen Murphy
is expecting changes: "They have realised there are diminishing
returns on all this sensationalist stuff. There is a back-to-basics
approach in the pipeline. There will still be good stories. Viewers
have come to expect television to be more fast-moving now than in
the old days. But they are going back to building character."
It is a verdict
with which Phil Redmond, founder of Brookside, agrees. Earlier this
year he talked about a new beginning for his soap with "a new
anti-sensationalist focus on real lives and everyday issues".
It sounds like
the right thing to say. "Look at drama across the schedules,"
he said, "and there is a greater taste for social comment and
deeper storylines connecting back to the audience's real lives.
"I don't
think soaps should think in terms of how much further we can go
any more. The preoccupation with the next big storyline has made
British soaps caricature themselves."
For Redmond,
the key to a good soap opera storyline is one that touches the viewers'
everyday lives, he said. The only trouble was that he was speaking
as he introduced his soap's new long-running storyline focusing
on bullying in school which peaked with a victim killing
his classmate tormentor. It is not the kind of everyday world that
I see from my window.
Obviously the
soap producers live somewhere altogether less salubrious.
VIEWING FIGURES
EastEnders 11m
Coronation Street 10.9m
Emmerdale 8.2m
Neighbours 6m
Crossroads 3m
Brookside 1.5m
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