Soap operas or 'soaps' criteria

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        This work is all about soap operas or `soaps’. A soap is a drama on TV which shows various aspects of family, or ordinary daily life.

        Soaps include aspects of family life, issues within families are greatly used parts in soaps. With family life you can see people growing up, people’s attitudes towards each other changing, for better and for worse. You can see families develop, falling in love, getting married like Nat and Barry in Eastenders. You get to see what the outcome is when one partner of a relationship goes behind the back of the other one, they have an affair. Eventually the good partner finds out the there are a lot of questions, will they stay together, will they not, what about the baby if there is one. Also what about the person the partner was having an affair with, what happens when the people around them find out. There are a lot of issues that can be raised by family life and an almost endless list of situations that can be created. These family life storylines are based around real life and shows good information and hidden messages to people, especially younger people about what goes on in life. They also show a number of outcomes and resolutions to help viewers.

        A soap is generally set in a limited location because as they concern family life the soaps stay around the area in which the families live, the house, the work place and public places like pubs or town parks etc. In Eastenders the work places are centred around the square like the arches for Gary and the Queen Vic for Alfi, Spencer and their Nan. Lynn works in the café and Pauline works in the launderette. There are many more jobs such as market stalls and the fish and chip shop. Also there is the night club, Angie’s Den. Some scenes are set outside of the usual location eg. A scene at an airport or a shopping center out of town, also nearly all of the soaps today are set in smaller towns and villages so they don’t have police stations and bigger hospitals so scenes that need to be produced in such locations means the soap is set in a different location for the duration of the scene. Eastenders is set in Albert Square, a small town on the east side of London. Emmerdale is set around a small country village with a farm, a few small town shops and old country houses. This soap also deals with family life but has the added bonus of the countryside and farms, which can create added storylines and drama.

        All soaps have no main character, one or two characters may be singled out over a period of two or three episodes of the soap if they are involved in the end and after math of the main storyline currently running through out the soap. They may have been involved in the build up but it only becomes a main storyline when a curtail event takes place. The soaps also involve a fixed set of characters, sometimes a new character is introduced to replace an old one or just to fill in a new role, like Alfi in Eastenders who is an imposter and has became the new manager at the Queen Vic. Characters are also sometimes removed from the soaps if they have had enough time in the soap. For instance when Jamie died as a result of the car crash when he was run over by Martin. The after math has still not been resolved, will Martin go to prison or won’t he? The directors will keep putting the trial off for as long as possible as this will keep viewers watching, too long though and some viewers may get tired of it. I think Martin should go to prison, Jamie was a very good character and cause many storylines to develop, like when he slept with Zoe, Sonia wasn’t happy and it took a lot for Jamie to win her back. Then Jamie had a huge bust up with Phil and decided to help Lisa get away from him, he did that for Sonia.  

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        Soaps show the high lights in people’s lives like marriage and births. They also show the crises in peoples lives like the current crises in the lives of Gary, Lynn and Laura after Gary has got Laura pregnant. Will he be able to get Lynn back or will this event finish Gary and Lynn’s rocky relationship.

        Soaps are aired at a good evening time when most people will be settling down after the day to watch the TV. This time is often called `prime time’ and it is between 7 and 8 o’clock. Eastenders is aired at 7:30 on Tuesdays ...

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