Chapter six
Text and audience
Preliminary: Soap opera and good television
The serial form has an international, multi-media history. Television serials, distinguished internationally by their viewer loyalty, have proved themselves an indispensable element in most broadcasting economies. Soap opera, in Britain, has, as a genre, a very powerful metaphorical existence, even though we have no equivalent of daytime North American soaps. To say something is soap opera is to say that, minimally, it is bad drama. Frequently, it is to say that the drama is slackly written, cheaply produced, poorly acted. Perhaps more significantly, it is to imply cliché, banality, and bathos. It is never a term of approbation. This meaning of the ...
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