Soap opera

Soap Opera redirects here. For the album by The Kinks, see Soap Opera (album).

A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction, usually broadcast on television or radio. This genre of TV and radio entertainment has existed long enough for audiences to recognize them simply by the term soap. What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is their open-ended nature. Plots run concurrently, intersect, and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different concurrent story threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another, or may run entirely independent of each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines but not always all of them. There is some rotation of both storylines and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely "wrap things up" storywise, and generally avoid bringing all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends there are always several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes invariably end on some sort of cliffhanger.

Evening soap operas sometimes differ from this general format and are more likely to feature the entire cast in each episode, and to represent all current storylines in each episode. Additionally evening soaps and other serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end of season cliffhanger. Some of the larger, disaster cliffhangers that affect a large proportion of the cast sometimes serve to bring all current storylines together.

Development of the "soap opera"

The soap opera form originated on U.S. radio in the 1930s, and expanded into television starting in the 1940s. They normally "air" during the daytime, hence the alternative name, daytime serial drama. Radio soap operas began in Chicago in 1930 when WGN broadcast the fifteen minute drama Painted Dreams, about the trials of an Irish-American widow and her daughter. By the start of World War II there were dozens of popular soap operas. The first concerted effort to air continuing drama on television occurred in 1946 on the DuMont television series Faraway Hill. Soap operas were introduced to network television in 1949, with NBC's short-lived These Are My Children, followed by NBC's Hawkins Falls in June 1950 and CBS's two year run of The First Hundred Years in December 1950. Two long-running soaps, Search for Tomorrow and Love of Life, started broadcasting in 1951. Guiding Light began on radio in 1937 and first aired on television in 1952.

The term "soap opera" originated from the fact that when these serial dramas were aired on daytime radio, the commercials aired during the shows were largely aimed at housewives. Many of the products sold during these commercials were laundry and cleaning items, and included a jingle praising the product. This specific type of radio drama came to be associated with these particular commercials, and this gave rise to the term "soap opera" — a melodramatic story that aired commercials for soap products. Though soap operas are still sponsored by companies such as Procter & Gamble, the diverse demographic groups that soap operas attract have caused other advertisements for such things as acne medication and birth control, appealing to a much younger audience.

Soap opera characteristics

Plots and storylines

Most soaps follow the lives of a group of characters who live or work in a particular place, or focus on a large, extended family. The storylines follow the day-to-day lives of these characters. In many soap operas, in particular daytime serials in the United States, the characters are generally more handsome, beautiful, seductive, and wealthy than the typical person watching the show. This is true to a lesser extent in soap operas from Australia and the United Kingdom, which largely focus on more everyday characters and situations and are frequently set in working class environments. Many Australian and UK soap operas explore social realist storylines such as family discord, marriage breakdown, or financial problems, and sometimes include significant amounts of comedy.

Romance, secret relationships, extra-marital affairs, and genuine love have been the basis for many soap opera storylines. In US daytime serials the most popular soap opera characters, and the most popular storylines, often involved a romance of the sort presented in paperback romance novels. Soap opera storylines sometimes weave intricate, convoluted, and sometimes confusing tales of characters who have affairs, meet mysterious strangers and fall in love, and who commit adultery, all of which keeps audiences hooked on the unfolding story twists. Australian and UK soap operas also feature a significant proportion of romance storylines.

In soap opera storylines, previously-unknown children, siblings, and twins (including the evil variety) of established characters often emerge. Unexpected calamities disrupt weddings, childbirths, and other major life events with unusual frequency. Much like comic books—another popular form of linear storytelling pioneered in the US during the 20th Century—a character's death is not guaranteed to be permanent without an on-camera corpse, and sometimes not even then. For example, the death of Dr. Taylor Forrester on The Bold and the Beautiful seemed permanent as she had flatlined on-camera and even had a funeral. But when actress Hunter Tylo returned in 2005, the show retconned the "flatlining" with the revelation that Taylor had actually gone into a coma.

"Soap music"

In addition, the musical soundtrack used for a soap opera uses a style that instantly identifies it as belonging to soap operas. Soaps aired during the golden age of radio usually used organs to produce most of their music (because they were cheaper than full-blown orchestras). The organists from the radio serials moved over to television, and were heard on some serials as late as the 1970s.

Like the storylines themselves, soap opera soundtracks were overblown and melodramatic. An instantly recognizable characteristic of a soap (one that has been spoofed and imitated many times) consists of a scene where a character delivers a shocking revelation. At that moment a single, blaring organ chord resonates on the soundtrack, emphasizing this dramatic moment.

Organ music was abandoned by the serials during the 1960s and 1970s to be replaced by pre-recorded library music, mostly created by synthesizers.

Soaps in the United States

The American soap opera The Guiding Light started as a radio drama in January 1937 and subsequently transferred to television. With the exception of several years in the late 1940s when Irna Phillips was in dispute with Procter & Gamble, The Guiding Light has been heard or seen every weekday since it started, making it the longest story ever told. Other American soaps that have been telecast for more than thirty years (and are still in rotation) include As the World Turns, General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, One Life to Live, All My Children, and The Young and the Restless. Due to the shows' longevities, it is not uncommon for multiple actors to play a single character over the span of many years. It is also not uncommon for a single actor to play several characters on other shows over the years. Actors such as Robin Mattson, Roscoe Born and Michael Sabatino have played no less than six soap roles. As actors transition between soap roles, it is not uncommon nowadays to be dropped from contract status to recurring status, a part of contract negotiations which is almost completely unique to U.S. soaps.

In the USA, the shows purely known in the vernacular as soap operas are broadcast during daytime. In the beginning, the serials were broadcast as fifteen-minute installments each weekday. In 1956, the first half-hour soaps debuted, and all of the soaps broadcast half-hour episodes by the end of the 1960s. When the soap opera hit a fever pitch in the 1970s, popular demand had most of the shows, one by one, expanded to an hour in length (one show, Another World, even expanded to ninety minutes for a short time). More than half of the serials (and all of the pre-'80s hour-long serials on the air today) expanded to the new time format by 1980. Today, eight out of the nine American serials air sixty-minute episodes each weekday. Only The Bold and The Beautiful airs for 30 minutes.

Port Charles used the practice of running 13-week "story arcs", in which the main events of the arc are played out and wrapped up over the 13 weeks, although some storylines did continue over more than one arc. According to the 2006 Preview issue of Soap Opera Digest, it was briefly discussed that all ABC shows might do telenovela arcs, but this was rejected.

The Golden Age of American television

Many soaps, in the beginning of television, found their niches in telling stories in certain environments. The Doctors and General Hospital, in the beginning, told stories almost exclusively from inside the confines of a hospital. As the World Turns dealt heavily with Chris Hughes's law practice and the travails of his wife Nancy who, when she tired of being "the loyal housewife" in the 1970s, became one of the first older women on the serials to become a working woman. The Guiding Light dealt with Bert Bauer (Charita Bauer) and her endless marital troubles. When her status moved to that of the caring mother and town matriarch, her children's marital troubles were then put on display. Search for Tomorrow told the story, for the most part, through the eyes of one woman only: the heroine, Joanne (Mary Stuart). Even when stories revolved around other characters, she was almost always a main fixture in their storylines. Days of Our Lives first told the stories of Dr. Tom Horton and his steadfast wife Alice. In later years, the show branched out and told the stories of their five children.

In contrast to these shows was Dark Shadows (1966-1971) which featured supernatural characters and dealt with fantasy and horror storylines. Its characters included the vampire Barnabas Collins, the witch Angelique, and various ghosts and goblins, both friendly and malevolent.

American soaps: for the evening, too

Prime time serials were just as popular as those in daytime. The first real prime time soap opera was ABC's Peyton Place (1964-1969), based in part on the original 1957 movie (which was itself taken from the 1956 novel). The popularity of Peyton Place prompted rival network CBS to spin off popular As the World Turns character Lisa Miller Grimaldi into her own evening soap opera entitled Our Private World in 1965. Our Private World ended in 1966 and the character of Lisa returned to As the World Turns.

The structure of the Peyton Place with its episodic plots and long-running story arcs would set the mold for the prime time serials of the 1980s when the format reached its pinnacle.

The successful prime time serials of the 1980s included Dallas, Dynasty, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest. These shows frequently dealt with wealthy families and their personal and big-business travails. Common characteristics were sumptuous sets and costumes, the presence of at least one glamorous bitch-figure in the cast of characters, and spectacular disaster cliffhanger situations. Unlike daytime serials which where shot on video in a studio using the multicamera setup, these evening series were shot on film using a single camera setup and featured much location-shot footage, often in picturesque locales. Dallas, its spin-off Knots Landing, and Falcon Crest all initially featured episodes with self-contained stories and specific guest stars who appeared in just that episode. Each story would be completely resolved by the end of the episode and there were no end-of-episode cliffhangers. After the first couple of seasons all three shows changed their story format to that of a pure soap opera with interwoven ongoing narratives that ran over several episodes. Dynasty featured this format throughout its run.

The soap opera's distinctive open plot structure and complex continuity also began to be increasingly incorporated into major American prime time television programs. The first significant drama series to do this was Hill Street Blues, produced by Steven Bochco, which featured many elements borrowed from soap operas such as an ensemble cast, multi-episode storylines and extensive character development over the course of the series. The success of this series prompted other drama series and situation comedy shows such as St. Elsewhere, E.R., The West Wing and Friends to incorporate soap opera style stories and story structure to varying degrees.

The prime time soap operas and drama series of the 1990s, such as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place and Dawson's Creek, focused more on younger characters. In the late 1990s and early 2000s many new prime time soap operas were produced for cable television, including Queer As Folk.

Evolution of US daytime soaps

For several decades US daytime soap operas concentrated on family and marital upsets, legal dramas and romances. The action rarely left the interior settings within the fictional, medium-sized Midwestern towns in which the shows were set. Exterior shots, once a rarity, were slowly incorporated into the series Ryan's Hope. Unlike many earlier serials which were set in fictional towns, Ryan's Hope was set in real location, New York City, and outside shoots were used to give the series greater authenticity. The first exotic location shoot was made by All My Children, to St. Croix in 1978. Many other soaps planned lavish storylines after seeing the success of the All My Children shoot. Another World went to St. Croix in March 1980 to culminate a long-running storyline between popular characters Mac, Rachel and Janice. Search for Tomorrow taped for two weeks in Hong Kong in 1981.

During the 1980s, perhaps as a reaction to the evening drama series that were gaining high ratings, daytime serials began to incorpate action and adventure storylines, more big-business intrigue, and featured an increased emphasis on youthful romance and began developing supercouples. One of the first and most popular supercouples was Luke and Laura in General Hospital. Luke and Laura helped to attract both male and female fans. Even Elizabeth Taylor was a fan and at her own request was given a guest role in Luke and Laura's wedding episode. Luke and Laura's popularity led to other soap producers striving to reproduce this success by attempting to create supercouples of their own. With increasingly bizarre action storylines coming into vogue Luke and Laura saved the world from being frozen, brought a mobster down by finding his black book in a Left-Handed Boy Statue, and helped a Princess find her Aztec Treasure in Mexico. Other soaps attempted similar adventure storylines, often featuring footage shot on location - frequently in exotic locales.

During the 1990s the mob stories and the action and adventure plotlines fell out of favour with producers due to overall lower ratings for daytime soap operas and the resultant budget cuts. In the 1990s soaps were no longer able to go on expensive location shoots to Argentina, France, Hawaii, Jamaica, Italy and Japan as they had in the 1980s. In the 1990s soaps increasingly focused on younger characters and social issues, such as Erica Kane's drug addiction on All My Children, the re-emergence of Viki Lord's Multiple Personality Disorder on One Life to Live, and Katherine Chancellor's alcoholism on The Young and the Restless. Other social issues included Breast Cancer, AIDS, and racism.

Perhaps to fill the niche, some newer shows have incorporated supernatural and science fiction elements into their storylines. One of the main characters in US soap opera Passions is Tabitha Lenox, a 300-year-old witch. Port Charles has featured a vampire character. Frequently these characters are isolated in one of the ongoing story threads allow a fan to ignore them if they do not like that element, a form of krypto-revisionism.

Characteristics of American soaps today

Modern U.S. daytime soap operas largely stay true to the original soap opera format. The duration and format of storylines and the visual grammar employed by US daytime serials set them apart from soap operas in other countries and from evening soap operas. Stylistically, UK and Australian soap operas, which are usually produced for evening timeslots, fall somewhere in-between US daytime and evening soap operas. Similar to US daytime soaps, UK and Australian are shot on videotape, and the cast and storylines are rotated across the week's episodes so that each cast member will appear in some but not all episodes. However UK and Australian soaps move through storylines at a faster rate than daytime serials, making them closer to US evening soaps in this regard.

American soap operas since the 1980s have shared many common visual elements that set them apart dramatically from other shows:

Overhead spotlighting, or back lighting, is often placed directly over the heads of all the actors in the foreground, causing an unnatural shadowing of their features along with a highlighting of their hair. Back lighting was always a standard technique of film and television lighting, though it was mostly abandoned in the mid-to-late eighties due to its somewhat unnatural look. The technique has nevertheless persisted in soap operas.
The rooms in a house often use deep stained wood wall panels and furniture, along with many elements of brown leather furniture. This creates an overall "brown" look which is intended to give a sumptuous and luxurious look to suggest the wealth of the characters portrayed.
Daytime soap operas do not routinely feature location or exterior-shot footage. Often they will recreate an outdoor locale in the studio. Australian and UK daily soap operas, on the other hand, invariably feature a certain amount of exterior-shot footage in every episode. This is usually shot in the same location and often on a purpose-built set, although they do include new exterior locations for certain storylines.
The visual quality of a soap opera is usually lower than prime time television shows due to the lower budgets and quicker production times involved. This is also due to the fact that soap operas are recorded on videotape using a multicamera setup, unlike primetime productions which are usually shot on film and frequently using the single camera shooting style. Because of the lower resolution of video images, and also because of the intense emotions explored by soap operas, daytime serials feature a heavy use of closeup shots.
Soaps often reuse the same blocking techniques. For example, if a romantically involved man and woman are talking to each other face-to-face, one character will inevitably turn 180° and face away from the other character while they both continue to have a conversation. While this would virtually never happen in real life, and is not seen outside of US daytime serials, it is an accepted soap convention.
In US daytime soaps, when a scene is about to reach a temporary conclusion and the episode is to switch to a new scene with a different set of characters, one character in the currently concluding scene will often be shown in extreme closeup and deliver a shocking announcement. No other character will respond and there will be no dialogue for several seconds while the music builds before cutting to a new scene. Additionally, in a construct unique to US daytime serials, the episode will frequently then return to this precise point in time after some intervening scenes, and the discussion will continue from the point where the revelation was made. Usually, however, when the discussion resumes the previously tense and dramatic mood created through music and closeup shots will have dissipated; the scene usually resumes in a relatively relaxed and sedate mode. The format of ending a scene to switch to other characters but to then return to the original scene at the precise time the viewer last left it is unique to US daytime serials.

Current American daytime television schedule

The daytime serials in America air five days a week, Monday through Friday. Local affiliates may air the serials at other times. (All times are Eastern local time*; subtract one hour for all other time zones).

All My Children
One Life to Live
General Hospital
The Young and the Restless
The Bold and the Beautiful
As the World Turns
Guiding Light
Days of Our Lives
Passions

	12:30 p.m.	1:00 p.m.	1:30 p.m.	2:00 p.m.	2:30 p.m.	3:00 p.m.	3:30 p.m.
ABC	Local Programming
CBS
NBC	Local Programming	Local Programming

Guiding Light airs at 10 a.m. in some markets in the East, while some local CBS affiliates do not air it at all. Guiding Light airs at 10 a.m. (ET)/9 AM (CT) on the following stations:

WYOU-TV - Scranton/Wilkes-Barre
WANE-TV - Fort Wayne

Since 2004, these stations have carried the show on a same-day basis as the rest of the network; previously, each episode aired a day behind the rest of the country. The exception is WANE, which began same-day airings on April 3, 2006. Guiding Light is on a day-behind basis on WGME Portland, ME and WSBT South Bend, IN, which air the show at 9 a.m. (ET), and is not carried on KOVR Sacramento or WNEM Flint, MI. KDKA Pittsburgh will begin airing Guiding Light at 10 AM in September 2006.

In some markets, Days of our Lives and Passions air on NBC affiliates with a one-hour difference either earlier or later (this stemmed from a 1990s agreement that many affiliates switch the timeslots of Days of Our Lives and Another World, which previously occupied the slot Passions now holds).

Soaps in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, soap operas are one of the most popular genres, most being broadcast during prime time. Most UK soaps focus on working-class communities. The most popular is ITV's Coronation Street (nicknamed Corrie), which regularly attracts the highest viewing figures for any programme.

Soap operas began on radio and consequently were associated with the BBC. The BBC continues to broadcast the world's longest-running radio soap, The Archers, on Radio 4. It has been running since 1951 nationally. It continues to attract over five million listeners, or roughly 25% of the radio listening population of the UK at that time of the evening.

In the 1960s Coronation Street revolutionised UK television and quickly became a British institution. Other soap operas of the 1960s included Emergency Ward 10 (ITV), and on the BBC Compact (about the staff of a women's magazine) and The Newcomers (about the upheaval caused by a large firm setting up a plant in a small town). However none of these came close to making the same impact as Coronation Street.

During the 1960s Corrie's main rival was Crossroads, a daily serial that began in 1964 and was broadcast by ITV at teatime. Crossroads was set in a Birmingham motel and while the series was popular, its purported low technical standard and bad acting was much mocked. By the 1980s its ratings had begun to decline and several attempts to revamp the series through cast changes and later, expanding the focus from the motel to the surrounding community, were unsuccessful, and Crossroads was cancelled in 1988.

A later rival to Corrie was ITV's Emmerdale Farm (later renamed Emmerdale) which began in 1972 in a daytime slot and had a rural Yorkshire setting. Increased viewing figures saw Emmerdale being moved to a prime-time slot in the 1980s. When Channel 4 began in 1982 it launched its own soap, the Liverpool based Brookside, which over the next decade re-defined the UK television soap. In 1985, the BBC's London based soap opera EastEnders debuted and was a near instant success with viewers and critics alike. Critics talked about the downfall of Coronation Street, but this was put to rest in 1994 when the two serials were scheduled opposite each other, with Corrie winning handily. For the better part of ten years, the show has shared the number one position with Coronation Street, but the ratings for EastEnders reached an all-time low as of late 2004, allowing Corrie to regain the top spot.

Daytime soaps were unknown until the 1970s because there was virtually no daytime television in the UK. ITV introduced General Hospital, which later transferred to a prime time slot, and Scottish Television had Take the High Road, which lasted for over twenty years. Later, daytime slots were filled with an influx of old Australian soap operas such as The Young Doctors, The Sullivans, Sons and Daughters and eventually, Neighbours and Home and Away. These achieved significant levels of popularity. Neighbours and Home and Away were moved to early-evening slots and the UK soap opera boom began in the late 1980s. Later, 1992 saw the BBC launch Eldorado to alternate with EastEnders but it only lasted a year; however, this failure did not stop the ever-increasing prominence that soap operas would have in UK schedules.

In 1995 Channel 4 introduced Hollyoaks, a soap with a youth focus that would eventually fill the gap made by the outgoing Brookside. When Channel Five began in March 1997 it came with its own soap opera, Family Affairs which debuted as a five-days-a-week soap. In 2001 a new version of Crossroads was produced by Carlton Television for ITV, featuring a mostly new cast, but it did not achieve satisfactory ratings and was cancelled in 2003. Family Affairs, which was broadcast opposite the racier Hollyoaks, never achieved significantly high viewing figures and after several dramatic revamps of the cast, changes in style and even location, it was cancelled in late 2005.

UK soaps for many years usually only aired two nights a week. The exception was the original Crossroads, which began as a five days a week soap opera in the 1960s, but was later reduced. In 1989, things started to change when Coronation Street began airing three times a week (later expanding further to four in 1996), a trend which was soon followed by rival EastEnders in 1994 and Emmerdale in 1997. Family Affairs debuted as a five-days-a-week soap in 1997 and regularly ran five episodes a week its entire run.

Today Coronation Street (which began screening two episodes on Monday nights in 2002) and Hollyoaks both produce five episodes a week, while EastEnders screens four. In 2004 Emmerdale began screening six episodes a week leading to the concern that soap operas in the UK were at saturation level.

Today's UK soap operas are mainly shot on videotape in the studio using a multicamera setup. However UK soap operas feature a proportion of outdoors shot footage in each episode - usually shot on a purpose-built outdoor set that represents the community the soap focuses on.

Soaps in Australia

Australia has had quite a number of well known soap operas, some of which have gained cult followings in the UK and other countries. The majority of Australian soap operas are produced for early evening or evening timeslots. They usually produce two or two-and-a-half hours of new material each week, either arranged as four or five half-hour episodes a week, or two one-hour episodes. Stylistically they most closely resemble UK soap operas in that they are nearly always shot on videotape, mainly in the studio using a multicamera setup, with some location-shot footage in each episode. Most Australian soaps focus on a mixed age range of middle-class characters.

The first successful wave of Australian evening soap operas started in the late 1960s with Bellbird produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This rural-based serial was a moderate success but built-up a consistent and loyal viewer base, especially in rural areas. The first big soap opera hit in Australia was the sex-melodrama Number 96 which began in March 1972, screening on Network Ten. Number 96 brought such rarely explored topics as homosexuality, adultery, drug use, rape-within-marriage and racism into Australian living rooms en masse. By 1973 it had become Australia's highest-rating show. In 1974 the sexed-up antics of Number 96 prompted the creation of The Box, which rivaled it in terms of nudity and sexual situations. Produced by Crawford Productions, many critics considered The Box to be a more slickly produced and better written show than Number 96, and in its first year it was extremely popular. Meanwhile in 1974 the Reg Grundy Organisation created its first soap opera, and significantly Australia's first teen soap opera, Class of '74. Its attempts to hint at the sex and sin shown more openly on Number 96 and The Box meant it came under intense scrutiny of the Broadcasting Control Board who vetted scripts and altered whole storylines. By 1975 both Number 96 and The Box, perhaps as a reaction to declining ratings for both shows, de-emphasised the sex and nudity moving more in the direction of comedy. Class of '74 was renamed Class of '75 for its second year but ratings dwindled and this year would also be its last.

A feature film version of Bellbird entitled Country Town was produced in 1971 not by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation but by two of the show's stars, Gary Gray and Terry McDermott. Number 96 and The Box also had feature film versions, both of which had the same title as the series, released in 1974 and 1975 respectively. As Australian television was in black and white until 1975 these theatrical releases all had the novelty of being in colour. The film versions of Number 96 and The Box also allowed more explicit nudity than could be shown on television at that time.

Launched on the Nine Network in late 1976 was The Sullivans, a series chronicling the affects of World War II on a Melbourne family. Produced by Crawford's this show was a ratings success and attracted many positive reviews. At around the same time Grundy's created a new teen-oriented soap, The Young Doctors, which also screened on Channel Nine starting late 1976. This show eschewed the sex and sin of Number 96 and The Box instead emphasising light-weight storylines and romance. It was also popular but unlike The Sullivans it was not a success with critics. Meanwhile in 1977 Number 96 would re-introduce nudity, with several much-publicised full-frontal nude scenes featured in an attempt to boost the show's plummeting ratings.

Bellbird, Number 96 and The Box were all cancelled in 1977; all had been experiencing declining ratings since 1975 and various attempts to revamp the shows with cast reshuffles or spectacular disaster storylines had proved only temporarily successful. Late that year they were replaced by such successful new shows as the Crawfords Produced Cop Shop (1977-1984) on Channel Seven, which was a meld of soap opera and police drama, and The Restless Years (1977-1981) on Channel Ten, which was another teen soap produced by the Reg Grundy Organisation. The Reg Grundy Organisation subsequently reached even higher levels of success with women's-prison drama Prisoner (1979-1986) on Network Ten, and melodramatic family saga Sons and Daughters (1981-1987) on the Seven Network. Both shows achieved high ratings in their first run, and unusually, found success in repeats after their original runs ended.

The Young Doctors and The Sullivans ran on Nine until 1982. Thereafter Channel Nine attempted many new soap operas, several produced by The Reg Grundy Organisation including Taurus Rising, Waterloo Station, Starting Out and Possession, along with Prime Time produced by Crawford's, but none were successful and most were cancelled after only a few months. The Reg Grundy Organisation also created Neighbours, a suburban-based daily serial devised as a sedate family drama with some comedy and lightweight situations, for the Seven Network in 1985.

Produced in Melbourne at the studios of HSV-7, Neighbours rated well in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, but not in Sydney. Sydney was the only city where it was shown in the earlier 5.30 p.m. timeslot which put it up against hit dating game show Perfect Match on Channel 10, and Seven's Sydney station ATN-7 quickly lost interest in the show. HSV-7 in Melbourne lobbied heavily to keep Neighbours going but ATN-7 managed to convince the rest of the network to cancel the show and instead keep ATN-7's own Sydney-based dramas A Country Practice and Sons and Daughters. After the network cancelled Neighbours it was immediately picked-up by Channel Ten. They revamped the cast and scripts slightly and from 20 January 1986 aired the series in the 7.00 p.m. slot. It initially attracted low viewing figures however after a concerted publicity drive Ten managed to transform the series into a major success, turning several of its actors into major international stars. The show's popularity eventually declined and it was moved to the 6.30 p.m. slot in 1992, yet the series retains consistent viewing figures in Australia and is still running today, making it Australia's longest-running soap opera.

The success of Neighbours prompted the creation of somewhat similar suburban and family or teen-oriented soap operas such as Home and Away (1988-) on Channel Seven and Richmond Hill (1988) on Channel Ten. Both proved popular, however Richmond Hill emerged as only a moderate success and was cancelled after one year to be replaced on Ten by E Street (1989-1993).

Meanwhile Nine had still failed to find a successful new soap opera. After the failure of family drama Family and Friends in 1990 they launched the raunchier and more extreme Chances in 1991, a series that would resurrect the sex and melodrama of Number 96 and The Box in an attempt to improve the show's chances of ratings success. However it too achieved only moderate ratings, although the increasingly bizarre storylines were much-discussed and the series continued into 1992 albeit in a late-night timeslot.

Several Australian soap operas have also found significant international success. In the UK starting in the mid 1980s daytime screenings of The Young Doctors, The Sullivans, Sons and Daughters and Neighbours achieved significant success. Neighbours was subsequently moved to an early-evening slot. Grundy's Prisoner began screening in the United States in 1979 and achieved high ratings in many regions there, however only the first three years of the series would be screened in that country. Prisoner was also screened in late-night timeslots in the UK beginning in the late 1980s, achieving enduring cult success there. The show became so popular in the UK that it prompted the creation of two stage plays and a stage musical based on the show, all of which toured the UK, among many other spin-offs. In the late 1990s Channel Five repeated Prisoner in the UK. Between 1998 and 2005 Five ran late-night repeats of Sons and Daughters. During the 1980s the Australian attempts to emulate big-budget US soap operas such as Dallas and Dynasty had resulted in Taurus Rising and Return to Eden, two slick soap opera dramas with big budgets and shot entirely on film. Though their middling Australian ratings ensured they ran only a single season both programs were successfully sold internationally.

Other shows to achieve varying levels of international success include Richmond Hill, E Street, Paradise Beach (1993-1994), and Pacific Drive (1995-1997). Indeed these last two series were designed specifically for international sales. Channel Seven's Home and Away, a teen soap developed as a rival to Neighbours, has also achieved significant and enduring success on UK television. Both shows get higher total ratings in the UK than in Australia (the UK has three times Australia's population) and the UK networks make a major contribution to the production costs.

Attempts to replicate the success of daily teen-oriented serials Neighbours and Home and Away saw the creation of Echo Point (1995) and Breakers (1999) on Network Ten, and more recently the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced the rural-based Something in the Air (2000-2002). None of these programs emerged as long-running successes and Neighbours and Home and Away remained the most visible and consistently successful Australian soap operas in production. In their home country they both attract respectable although not spectacular ratings, and both continue to achieve significant ratings in the UK. This and other lucrative overseas markets, along with Australian broadcasting laws that enforce a minimum amount of local drama production for commercial television networks, help ensure that both programs remain in production. Neighbours, which is celebrated its 20th Anniversary in 2005, was aired on the U.S. channel Oxygen in March 2004, however it attracted few viewers, perhaps in part because it was scheduled opposite well-established and highly-popular US soap operas such as All My Children and The Young and The Restless, and due to low ratings it was cancelled shortly afterwards.

New Australian serial headLand premiered on Channel Seven in November 2005. This new series rose from the ashes of a proposed Home and Away spinoff that was to have been produced in conjunction with the UK's Channel Five, which screens Home and Away. The spin-off idea was cancelled after Channel Five pulled-out of the deal, which meant that the show could potentially screen on a rival UK channel, so Five requested that the new show developed as a stand-alone series and not feed off a series they own a stake in. The series premiered in Australia on 15 November 2005 but was not a ratings success and was cancelled 23 January 2006.

Soap parodies

A few soap opera spoofs have been made. Two of the most famous U.S. spoofs were Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Soap. Australia also produced a spoof of glamorous beach-side soap operas in the form of Shark Bay, which featured many former Australian soap stars from Sons and Daughters, Prisoner, Home and Away and Neighbours.
Within the story of Australian soap opera Prisoner two characters in the 1985 season became addicted to daytime serial Days of the Week and would eagerly discuss plot twists within the fictional show.
On British television, comedian Victoria Wood had a long-running spoof soap entitled Acorn Antiques on her sketch show (loosely based on ITV's Crossroads).
In the United States, Carol Burnett frequently ran a soap opera spoof on her show, called As the Stomach Turns, modeled in name after As the World Turns. Dramatic coincidences and missed cues (parodying a time in which soaps were broadcast live) were seen frequently, as well as the melodramatic welling of organ music, which was a staple on American serials until the 1970s.
A frequent staple of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was a soap opera spoof involving unsuspecting members of the studio audience called The Edge of Wetness, the title of which is a takeoff on The Edge of Night.
Futurama frequently features scenes from an almost all-robot soap, called All My Circuits. The robot Calculon is the show's star.
The U.S. comedy team of Bob and Ray produced regular spoofs of many different radio programs, and later of several television programs, all presented on their long-running (1946-1987) radio programs. The best-known, which included a new episode with a cliffhanger ending daily, was Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife, a play on the radio soap Mary Noble, Backstage Wife.
In the episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends entitled "Berry Scary", the plot twists in the episode resemble those in a spoof of The Young and the Restless entitled The Loved and the Loveless.
Australian sketch comedy series Fast Forward featured the recurring Dumb Street skit, which parodied soap operas in general, but in particular the then current shows Neighbours, Home and Away, E Street and A Country Practice. Fast Forward also featured Rampant Stupidity a recurring skit which spoofed melodramatic series in the Dallas and Dynasty mold.
"Moody's Point", a soap spoof appearing on several episodes of The Amanda Show.
U-Pick Live's "As The World Picks" segments.
Queer as Folk's show-within-a-show Gay as Blazes which humorously parodies Queer as Folk itself.
The Muppet Show parodied medical serials such as General Hospital and The Doctors in the skit Veterinarians' Hospital.
SCTV featured the soap opera parody Days of the Week (an obvious reference to Days of our Lives). The intricate storyline, which ran as a recurring segment on the sketch show, featured such soap opera cliches as amnesia, terminal illness, the return of long-lost relatives, disastrous weddings, and court-room trials.
Sitcom Moesha featured an episode that parodied The Young and the Restless. Entitled The Mo' and the Restless, this episode spoofed Y&R even to its opening.
"Palm Beach", a skit on Saturday Night Live which lampooned the 2000 US Presidential election, featured an opening titles sequence that parodied that of The Young and the Restless.
Sunset Beach featured a parody within itself. During one of the Thanksgiving episodes, the soap did a nod to VH1's Pop-Up Video by conveniently pointing out to viewers that a turkey baster used to baste a turkey wasn't the same one used in a storyline where one of the characters was impregnated by a turkey baster.
The musical comedian and parodist Spike Jones recorded the spoof track "None But The Lonely Heart (A Soaperetta)" in the 1940s.
In the That '70s Show episode entitled "Vanstock", an out-of-work Red becomes addicted to soap operas and has a dream in which he and his wife play roles on a soap called Point Place. The soap parody pokes fun at stereotypically "cheap" production (boom microphones peeking into the camera shot), "cheesy" soap dialogue and crying, and organ music.

Red: Oh, Kitty. What have I become?

Kitty: I don't know! You're not the man I married! And I'm not Kitty!

In the Red Dwarf episode "Kryten", Kryten watches a soap named Androids, a parody of Neighbours.
The 1990s sitcom Martin featured references to Pam and Gina's favorite soap opera, "All My Young'ns", whose title is spoofed from All My Children.
In the music video for the Queen song I Want To Break Free the band are dressed in a manner inspired by the dress and aesthetic of Coronation Street.
In the television show The Simpsons there is a recurring soap opera called Search For the Sun, including such satirical situations as a man entering a room dressed as a reverend, followed by a naked blonde woman, who was in the middle of love making, saying "Father McGraff, I thought you were dead!" while trying to cover her naked body, to which he replies "I was."

External links

Museum of Broadcast Communications' Soap Opera article
Soap Opera History.com
Soap On The Range — World's First Animated Soap Opera
The Aussie Soap Archive — Guide to Classic Australian Soap Operas
The Soap Show— Weekly webcast of interviews with actors from British and Australian soaps

Entertainment | Television genres | Soap operas

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