Home » Film & TV » British Television » British Soaps

British Soaps

© Hunter Peters

From Manchester to Manhattan, soap operas are the talk of the town. In the U.S. they run daily during the week, attracting a rapt audience of housewives, students and virtually everyone else with a T.V. to stare at in the middle of the afternoon. The sordid tales of lust, betrayal and money have extraordinarily loyal followers who lose themselves, if only for an hour a day, in their "stories". In the U.K. the best soaps run in prime time and attract a huge nationwide audience. It's not unusual for U.K. soaps such as Coronation Street, EastEnders and Brookside to top the ratings. omnibus editions are offered for those viewers with only enough time to watch once a week.

The most popular U.K. soaps eschew the superficial, second rate glamour of their American counterparts and attempt to be as realistic as a television program can possibly manage. Times are hard in most U.K. soaps. Not to say that there aren't doses of glamour and excitement now and again — the residents of Brookside Close seem to live in the Bermuda Triangle of Liverpool. The EastEnders mob have gotten out and about to such exotic locations as Amsterdam and Paris. UK soaps are also global in popularity with fans worldwide always eager for a bit of dish and dirt. A fine site on the Web covering the U.K./Aussie soap scene in general is Soap Heaven. Here you'll find plenty of storylines (beware of spoilers!) and discussion on all your favorites.

Coronation Street is the longest running of the Brit-Soaps, airing continuously since its 1960 premier. Corrie, set in fictional Weatherfield, has become a part of English popular culture with such memorable characters as Ken Barlow (William Roache), Bet Lynch (Julia Goodyear) and Elsie Tanner (Pat Phoenix). Many famous faces have passed through Corrie including Patricia Rouledge (Keeping Up Appearances), Geoffrey Palmer (Reggie Perrin), Ben Kingsley, Prunella Scales (Fawlty Towers) and Peter Noone (Hermans Hermits) and a fair number of celebrities are fans of the show (including , it has been said, the Royals!).

Coronation Street is the soap all others are measured against. Recently Corrie has strived to update its image with more youth oriented story arcs, while still keeping the charm that has made it classic that it is. For more information on Coronation Street surf over to The Official Coronation Street WebSite which features all the usual info plus Corrie e-postcards and more. Also worth a visit are Chris Colcomb's Unofficial Coronation Street pages and Who's Who in Coronation Street.

EastEnders, the most popular U.K. soap here in the US, is a far

The copyright of the article British Soaps in British Television is owned by . Permission to republish British Soaps in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.