Why are soaps so relentlessly melodramatic? Credit: YouTube
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Let’s compare and contrast two women with eventful lives.
Elsie Tanner — a long-time resident of a small street in the Manchester suburb of Weatherfield — worked as a seamstress, with occasional stints at other jobs. She was married three times. Her first husband abandoned her and their two young children; her second, an American soldier, was killed by a fellow GI in a squalid dispute over gambling debts; her third marriage ended in divorce. Eventually Elsie moved to Portugal to run a wine bar with an old flame.
Sharon Watts is a long-time resident of a square in the London suburb of Walford. She is the adopted child of publicans Den and Angie Watts, and has worked mostly as a pub/nightclub manager. She has also been married three times — to mechanic Grant Mitchell, her adoptive brother Dennis, and to Grant’s brother Phil, an alcoholic, drug-addicted gangster.
Sharon’s father Den faked his own death but returned 20 years later, only to be murdered by his new wife and secretly buried under his own pub. Sharon’s second husband — her father’s biological son Dennis — was also murdered, by gangsters, shortly afterwards. Sharon gave birth to his son, also named Dennis, but he was recently drowned (aged 13) in a freak boat accident; at the same moment Sharon (aged 51) gave birth to a child by her toyboy lover, Keanu.
Sharon’s biological father Gavin (who also faked his own death, and was married to Sharon’s mother-in-law, who also faked her own death) turned out to be a gangster, who kidnapped Sharon’s third husband Phil, doused her house with petrol, and threw her auntie from a window to her death.
Sharon has been involved in five separate car accidents, three kidnappings, and she’s been seriously assaulted more times than I can accurately ascertain, usually by gangsters. Oh, and she’s also addicted to painkillers, has no spleen, and she was a pop singer.
In some ways, the characters are similar. They’re both tough, no-nonsense ladies with dubious reputations and hearts of gold. But Elsie lived at a time when British TV soap operas went out just twice a week, and were part of a rich tapestry of varied prime-time programming.
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SubscribeBravo! The ‘issue of the month’ is a problem, too. Whenever someone coughs it’s unfailingly ominous and you have to guess which obscure disorder needs promoting next!