Been watching EastEnders sometimes again lately and I've noticed how similar their big stories are to Coro street

Coronation street:
Kylie was killed by a thug, David promised to get revenge and now he is going after her killer

EastEnders:
Paul was killed by a thug, Ben promised to get revenge and now he is going after his killer

And also

Coronation street:
Leanne's pregnant after a one night stand and lying to some ppl who the father is

EastEnders:
Denise is pregnant after a one night stand and lying to some ppl who the father is

Is this a coincidence or just lazy writing?!

Corrie has been copying EE.

They've been doing it for years.

I think its just a coincidence. the stories are planned out months in advance on is one show is doing one story and another show starts the same story a few weeks later there is no way they would have time to steal the idea from the other show.

Maybe like a few months after each other yeah but not at exactly the same time jeez!

They've been doing it since more than one soap came on telly. There are only a finite number of story lines that soaps can do so there are bound to be ones that more than one soap do. Story lines are written months in advance so any similarities between story lines at any given time are just a coincidence.

Exactly, like right around the time the Platts burried Callum in Gail's manhole, on The Haves and the Have Nots Candice's baby daddy Quincy attacked her and Jeffery killed him and they burred Quincy in the back yard of Candice's house. Now there is no way Tyler Perry was watching Corrie and copying there story.

It isn't really hard for soaps to copy each other as they basically repeat the same storylines. Heck they repeat their own material.

All the other soaps copy MyEastEnders, because they are jealous.

Denise hadn't lied to anyone, she is just not disclosing who the father is at present.

You could also add in the drug addiction story of Holly in ED and Jay in EE and you can't tell me that's a coincidence considering ED have been running that for a number of months prior.

Then again you could argue ED copied HO with Ste's addiction, which could then be linked to CS who copied after Izzy started taking cannabis. They've all done a drugs storyline this year, a coincidence? I think not!!

Izzy high on drugs was hilarious!

"BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE!"

it'd be cool to see a remix of that on YouTube!

The initial story line about Holly and drug addiction in ED was in 2010 thus the HO and Corrie ones could be said to have copied the ED one. This can just go on for ever.

In Hollyoaks they had Sonia pretending to be the Lovedays' lost daughter Lisa. This happened just a year after Andy in Corrie pretended to be Michael Rodwell's son Gavin.

Irene in Home and Away was an alcoholic in 1991, and Phil in EE became an alcoholic some years later!

Emma Summerhayes dying on Eastenders but use bing led to believe it was Ronnie was almost a carbon copy of Chloe dying on Home and Away and us being led to believe for the whole episode it would be Martha.
I guessed almost at the start of the episode Emma would be dead and Ronnie OK as the Home and Away story came straight to my mind

But there are a lot of soaps and have all been going for a long time. They are bound to overlap and probably take inspiration from each other.

ITV started a soap in 1960, then the Beeb copied the idea in 1985.....

If every incident of so called 'copying' over the years was listed this thread could grow into a monster!!

All soaps rehash the same basic storylines and have done for decades. It's just the characters and circumstances that change. Affairs, disease, addictions, accidents etc.

It's inevitable that storylines will come up at the same time across two or more soaps.

and Kylie wasn't killed for being gay.....

We used to have a standing joke that Sally from Corrie told her real-life husband Tim, who writes for Emmerdale about the upcoming stories, and vice-versa, as they were so coincidental at times-very naughty if they did, but i suppose they weren't allowed to discuss confidential details when they were clocked off - allegedly!

The closer the storylines air to each other, the less likely they are to be copying each other as they are fiiilmed approx 2 months in advance, scripted about 4 months in advamced and storyline 9-12 months in advance - sometimes longer.

It is completely impractical for a soap to see something air (like Kylie's death in July) and produce a story copying it to air a couple of weeks later (like Paul's death).

I'd say the minimum time it could take for a storyline to be 'copied' from airing would be 6 months, more like 9. And, they wouldn't do it because they wouldn't want to be accused of copying. I happen to personally know a former storyline for Emmerdale and Corrie and he said one of the worst things is having a story you've been discussing at storylining conferences for the next year turn up in a rival soap as you know it will have to be shelved for at least a couple of years or risk being accused of just having copied it. And no soap actually wants that.

Soap reflect real life. There are only so many 'stories' to tell and therefore certain things will come up again and again and due to the long term story potential of a 'whose the daddy' or a 'cuckoo in the nest', unplanned pregnancies from a ONS are always going to crop up again and again. I'd be surprised if there hasn't been one in each soap every other year, probably more often.

At the end of the day what can they do? Every storyline under the sun has been done so nothings original anymore.
Soaps don't intend to copy each other there is just nothing new left for them to do.

It is an entertaining idea and of course, impossible to prove one way or another but I doubt they talk 'shop' at home. Maybe the usual "such and such is annoying me" stuff but not details of upcoming plots.

Firstly because they'll know they could both risk losing their jobs if a leak was traced back to them
Secondly because they probably want to leave work at work and concentrate on their kids and other personal stuff.

Exception there, might have been Sally's Cancer story as Sally the actress did discover she had Cancer at the same time, found the filming hard so would probably have talked to her husband about it.

As i mentioned before, I know an ex storyline (and script writer actually) and I know they know lots of other people in the industry. People make friends at work, they stay friends so people will be working on rival soaps that socialise together so theoretically could let something slip.

But that happens in most industries and any industry where confidentiality is an issue, people know and respect that. They know not to talk to their mates about specifics of what they are doing at work, if a real friend, you know better than to ask.

I've had confidentiality clauses in most of my contracts (working in Advertising) so don't discuss specifics with my friends who work for rival companies.

It's just how it is

But you need to remember these storylines are planned six to 12 months in advance. They don't pull out storylines on the whim so they can rival the other soaps.

It could be argued that EastEnders copied Corrie by having a soap set in a city suburb.