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What is wrong and right with soaps these days? |
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#1 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 1,192
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What is wrong and right with soaps these days?
Come on forum posters, I want your opinions on the wrongs and rights on soaps these days. Is BK ruining your daily dose of HO or Max being too sexy on EE these days? If I was you, I'd get the memes out and the popcorn, we're in for a treat!
PS, BK purposely makes HO sensationalist to annoy us all as he freely visits the forums anonymously. |
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#2 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Winter is coming.
Posts: 13,323
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Wrong with EE: Dreadful pacing; nasty, unlikeable characters.
Right with EE: MyLauren and/or Cindy. |
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#3 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 1,192
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Quote:
Wrong with EE: Dreadful pacing; nasty, unlikeable characters.
Right with EE: MyLauren and/or Cindy. |
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#4 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 10,301
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So wrong to have Dean strut around the Square and the show showing no respect for Linda . It just bugs me so much
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#5 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 651
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I think these days, although executive producers are creating great characters, they're forgetting the soul of drama - story.
Soaps should always have powerfully engaging or sweetly enticing stories that are fully relatable and make you want to stop what you're doing to watch them. Stories have to be planned and importantly progress character, with a measured journey - even if there's twists or secrets, a story arc that has a beginning middle and end. Focus on creating characters, celebrity casting, filling quotas for diversity, etc all rule out the simple art of telling a story. If this was adhered too, I guarantee we'd have more viewers of multiple soaps. We've definitely had some great issues being explored in recent years, significantly mental illness and rape from all soaps, but I feel the storylines to explore these issues and others could have been deeper |
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#6 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 5,663
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Every storyline is either rushed or dragged so the climax of it can air on Christmas or at an anniversary. Ruins the natural flow of stories.
Too much predictability and clichés and spoilers. |
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#7 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 1,653
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I think what is wrong with soaps today is that there is a conflict between the production model and modern audiences.
The production model is to maximise the economical potential of the production (maximum possible episodes each week). However modern TV audiences are more fragmented so overall television audiences are down. This reduces ratings so some programs have their budgets reduced with visible effects on screen (faster-than-ever two-take scenes and reduced locations and cast in Neighbours). Other programs plod along with filler episodes guided by economies like block storytelling, interspersed with big stunts to boost ratings. EastEnders in the 1980s was great - when it had a tight cast and produced two episodes each week. I feel that four episodes a week really isn't sustainable long term and five or six episodes a week is definitely too rushed. While I've seen Australian soaps like Prisoner and Number 96 on DVD where they produced some fantastic episodes at the rate of four or five half hours each week, those programs burned themselves out after a few years as the tired cast members started leaving the show and storylines got repetitive. |
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#8 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 215
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I think the problem is the number of episodes. I think EE is sensible staying at 4 whilst the ITV ones are putting 6 out soon! I think 5 is too much, especially with the state Corrie is in. They should cut back to 3 or 4 to focus on what goes in.
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#9 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 699
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I completely agree with grangehilllover and MelSingleton. Albeit, I think if they went down to 3 eps a piece per episode, they would be better able to more appropriately time and present their stories - without stretching them out beyond their sell-by-date and letting the actors and production teams have longer to produce episodes and perform vital quality control work, including checking continuity.
You could use the additional funds freed up by that to try out other things, workplace dramas, one-offs like Play For Today or sitcoms in the extra episodes places. Perhaps a once-a-week, workplace type show like Waterloo Road or The Bill but in a different setting with the extra funds. Or a telenovela. Or a good long-running mystery show. Or a Telenovela, even if its a straight adaption of something for the British market. There's lots of different options, why limit yourself to five or six episodes of the same thing? I would also point out that the 1970s, 80s and first half of the 90s which everybody sees as the Golden Age of Soaps Operas was when almost every show was two or three episodes a week - I sincerely doubt this is coincidence..... |
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#10 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 30,384
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All the soaps want every episode to be great they forget that a build up to storyline is just as good also storylines ending to quick and another starting straight away and finally Why do characters get over someone being killed so quickly it is so unrealistic like for example Yasmeen in Coronation Street laughing and joking with Rita
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#11 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 39,630
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Emmerdale is the only one I watch.
Things they're doing right: Val's death was very moving (but I wish they hadn't killed her off) I'm enjoying Bernice's sweet and funny courtship with Lawrence "who cares if he's gay, just pour the wine" White Cain is unbelievably awesome in all respects Laurel's alcoholism was brilliant (but she's got over it way too fast) Kerry is my hilarious Geordie Queen (and has got some big shoes to fill now Val's gone) The Whites at Home Farm are all fabulous, including Robert and Chrissie together (if not "together"). The ticking clock of Robert's secret over killing Katie is a cracker. Things they're not doing right: The Jai story bends my brain. Jai's a panto villain, Leyla looks like an idiot, I'm sick of Rachel and Sam going round in circles. END IT, PLEASE. Charity's baby, Megan's baby, Vanessa's baby - for god's sake no more babies, it's such lazy storytelling. Ladies, it's called contraception, we all do it. Ross and Debbie - absolutely crap. Ross's "is he dead" non-exit: also absolutely crap. Ruining Ross, one of their best characters: absolutely crap. "Robron": get tae fockerty fock. Emma's revenge: just not working for me, she looks desperate. But the main point is the same with all the soaps, and has already been said: great characters, but some poor storytelling. These guys working on soaps now learn to storyline, but that doesn't mean they can tell stories - two very different things. There's too much bending characters and behaviours to fit plot. |
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#12 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: I like to singy singy singy...
Posts: 17,667
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Quote:
I completely agree with grangehilllover and MelSingleton. Albeit, I think if they went down to 3 eps a piece per episode, they would be better able to more appropriately time and present their stories - without stretching them out beyond their sell-by-date and letting the actors and production teams have longer to produce episodes and perform vital quality control work, including checking continuity.
You could use the additional funds freed up by that to try out other things, workplace dramas, one-offs like Play For Today or sitcoms in the extra episodes places. Perhaps a once-a-week, workplace type show like Waterloo Road or The Bill but in a different setting with the extra funds. Or a telenovela. Or a good long-running mystery show. Or a Telenovela, even if its a straight adaption of something for the British market. There's lots of different options, why limit yourself to five or six episodes of the same thing? I would also point out that the 1970s, 80s and first half of the 90s which everybody sees as the Golden Age of Soaps Operas was when almost every show was two or three episodes a week - I sincerely doubt this is coincidence..... |
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#13 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 651
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Completely disagree. The number of episodes shouldn't determine how good stories are, I think it's about changing the way producers approach storytelling or how well done the planning is. Funds or money shouldn't be the problem - the same few days spent on a story conference (when all the writers/story team get together) could be utilised more effectively
I don't see any characters being axed, so if anything, a smaller amount of episodes would further concentrate the way storylines are told and not give many cast members drama or much to do |
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#14 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 243
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Lack of relevance. A great soap should reflect the times and capture the zeitgeist. When they do this - as Brookside did in the early 90's (the Jordache body under the patio plot running at the same time as Fred West's patio killings were revealed) - they can be amazing.
The soaps these days tend to be set on another planet: EastEnders has no sense of 21st century life, social media is never mentioned and the characters still live in a 1950's world that beggars belief. Also too many vile, stock characters that the audience are meant to like. In the glory days of soap you wanted the characters to be your friends and most plots reflected normal people in extraordinary circumstances. Nowadays it's ridiculous 'one note' characters in sensational circumstances, which will have no psychological impact on their development whatsoever. Massive life changing circumstances such as murders or explosions are forgotten in weeks. Nowadays your long term partner can be brutally murdered yet within weeks you're getting married to someone else. Ridiculous! |
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#15 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 6,968
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Right:
- Statistically, the level of acting has improved tenfold. I know that it's much nicer to think that everyone was a better actor back in the seventies and eighties, but the truth is that hardly any of those 'good old days' actors would be able to compete with the likes of Alison King and Charlotte Bellamy and Lindsey Coulson now. Much like sport, the standard gets better and better as people learn more and more about the craft. - They're always striving to do better. More and more, they seem to want to be competing with the big, flashy prime-time dramas with more complex storytelling and sharper twists and turns. - I really love the way that soaps in the last decade have managed to separate themselves from some of the old stigmas and unfair press attention. Soaps feel so much more well respected now than they ever have done before. I love, love, love that. Wrong: - Block storytelling can be highly damaging in the way that slows everything down and can often lose the audience's focus. - The worst actors on a soap can sometime let the side down and distract from the high talent elsewhere. - Inconsistency in general. You can be watching a brilliant, gripping storyline one moment and then an utterly dull one the next. |
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