My timelines on twitter and Facebook were heavily cluttered last week with snippets about EastEnders. Some of it was virulent too. The cast can’t act, the story lines are unbelievable, it’s just so miserable. All of this may well be true, but in the world of soaps, aren’t they all?
Coronation Street is much nicer, apart from those grisly shootings, tram accidents, messy divorces and Len Fairclough’s unfortunate swimming pool incident. Actually, the latter may have been in real life. It’s so hard to tell. And Emmerdale, with its Lockerbie storyline featuring scores of stuffed upside down sheep and ludicrous characters played by actors who can’t act. But all soaps have actors who can’t act. I have not seen Corrie for years but the bloke who played Albert Tatlock couldn’t act, neither could Bernard Youens who played bin man Stan Ogden. And I have no wish to see Corrie ever again.
I have seen short segments of Downton Abbey, which comes across like a Poundshop Upstairs Downstairs, but soaps are, I have concluded, for people who have too much time on their hands of an evening. (I of course don’t have too much time on my hands when I watch hour upon hour of sport.)
But what I really miss is Eldorado.
Eldorado, you may remember, was a soap based in Spain. It revolved round a group of ex pat Brits and some locals. I loved it from the start, especially all that sunshine on a dark winter’s day, although the story lines and acting left something to desire to begin with. The ratings were dire at the start and heads rolled in terms of actors, writers and producers and slowly the show began to improve. And within very little time at all, some 8 million people were watching. There was, of course, much criticism from the media (especially the Murdoch press, who saw an open goal to attack their hated BBC) and even from within the BBC where DJ Terry Wogan regularly piled in to have a pop at the show.
The show had really turned the corner when the BBC decided to scrap the show. There was a small campaign to save it but the BBC wanted to put it behind them and move on to something else.
That was the end of my soap watching forever. I had long given up on Corrie, never really got into EastEnders and saw Emmerdale as a TV version of the Archers, but for working class people. I didn’t exactly make a conscious decision to abandon soap but the very thought of watching the same programme with the same characters several times a week for the rest of my natural fills me with dread.
But if the BBC brings back Eldorado, I might just be available in my armchair.
