Within Dream Team there are mainly three types of storylines, which appeal to its audience. There are the serious storylines, for example a murder trial; there are the less serious yet equally more important storyline, such as the Harchester United coach failing his chance to be team manager. Then there are the ridiculous and almost farcical storylines such as the time when one of the team players bought a baby for £10,000. Although most soaps have these types of storylines as well, Dream Team has a significant lack of depth when covering these storylines which leads me to believe that it caters for the “lads mags” generation and can be seen as lowbrow.
Dream Team does comply with basic soap conventions however; it subverts the genre by varying these conventions or conforming to them in a less conventional way.
Dream Team is a serial with never ending interwoven storylines. It has different stories with different levels of importance and seriousness, it does in a way focus on a community and it does use contempory music of the time period, which it is set in. All these are soap conventions that it abides by. However, the community that Dream Team focuses on is not a regular community. It is a “football” community consisting of a football club. Dream Team lacks the “gritty realism” found within British soaps. Other soaps have this aspect due to hard-hitting storylines, good quality acting with modern issues and indigenous music of the current time. Dream Team characters lead a rich and relatively financially comfortable life. Money is not an issue, which is reflected in the set, clothes and accessories of the characters. This is not realistic, as it does not echo British society as a whole. Most soaps have a community, which does mirror British society, as they are a microcosm of the British public. Dream Team however, is very particular to one type of lifestyle and way of living with not much diversity. Dream Team can be seen as being easy to type cast and quite niche and so therefore caters for its own niche market.
Dream Team also has poor quality acting at times but makes up for this section of realism by drafting in real, well known, footballers or football celebrities. Also with the introduction of real football match footage being integrated within the soap, the makers of Dream Team have added an aspect of realism. Dream Team’s music is of contemporary but it is of a certain genre, which is mainly “indie” music reflecting the laddish tones of the soap. The music is also non indigenous and more of a sound track to the soap. The music seems to carry the emotions within the soap more than the actual acting does because it is not of such high quality. Examples of this can be found when sad music is used for sad times forsaking dialect, which might subtract the sentiment of a particular scene. Some times these methods of making the soap can work against it and can make it look less real. The audience might be so used good acting that they can tell where music is being used to substitute for poor acting. Also when real football footage is integrated within the soap when the team is playing, the quality of the footage is different and not consistent so by this the soap makers are involuntarily highlighting the fact that it is not a real match.
I can conclude that the ways in which the makers of Dream Team have subverted the genre does not appeal to a wider audience at all but to a niche/selective audience. Dream Team is quite limited, its focus is on football mainly and all other aspects of the soap revolve around this. Therefore Dream Team is quite limited in its appeal and a “wider audience” will not be viewing the soap.