British Soap Operas include Eastenders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale, and are often focused around a small community, with the local pub a prominent location. Story lines often tend to focus on real life events and issues in the public attention; for example, a rising storyline in the last decade is that of homosexuality - in 1993, Brookside was the first soap opera to show a lesbian kiss before the 9pm watershed, and since then many others have done the same. In Hollyoaks, a whole storyline was dedicated to the emerging relationship between two male characters, John Paul and Craig.
(Brookside)
Other typical story lines are based around illness, eating disorders, rebellious and negatively portrayed teenagers, pregnancy, murder and marital affairs. The reason these story lines occur time and time again is that audiences can relate to them, because they are realistic situations, or because they have experienced something similar. Often after dealing with a difficult or controversial storyline, soap operas will feature the number for a telephone help line alongside the credits to aid viewers who may have been affected by the subject in that episode. These types of storylines are appealing to active audiences because they can feel involved because the storylines relate to their own personal lives.
Most soap operas started out having one episode per week, which featured the majority of the cast; nowadays, there tends to be between 3 and 5 episodes a week, which adds to the sense of real life. Although episodes are filmed up to a month in advance of broadcasting, sometimes live episodes are shown when there has been a particularly intense storyline. For example, in 2010, Eastenders broadcast a live episode dedicated to solving the mystery of "who killed Archie?" where not even the cast members knew who had until a very short time before airing.
In recent years, producers of soap operas have made a concerted effort to portray a range of diverse characters from different backgrounds and ethnic groups. Eastenders has been slated in the past for not showing what a community in East London would actually be like, because there are not enough characters from ethnic minorities.
All soap operas have an instantly recognisable theme tune and introduction sequence, which is important because it gives viewers a sense of stability and is something they know well, and so are more likely to watch it.
Episodes tend to be half an hour long, and throughout the episode will feature several story lines. Soap Operas are open narratives because story lines continue for an extended period of time, and don't end at the end of each episode. Soap Operas can be seen as following the "Hypodermic Needle" theory, because audiences tend to be passive and fed the information the producers give them without any input. However, there are times when this isn't the case; in 2009, Hollyoaks amended a storyline they were planning to run after criticisms over the similarities between it and the murder case of James Bulger. A character in the show was to be revealed to having killed a child when she was 12 years old, and James Bulger's mother appealed to them, saying that they were "turning James's death into a topic for entertainment".
Photos from
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKx853_9NXCt9-bTDqcJQxqgfdaCZbnHSFxI3c7MOi-lIyt7sOZC_HkvxtEWBiCNFK-q9EdOBEMAssSiLUO8elIwhYE6kgwWV-eTKTspHIogSCogqGYFiCruRDvr5W1tjLaTlu_oRImJzb/s400/brookside-anna-friel-kiss-431x300.jpg
http://holysoapcdn.five.tv/assets/images/8532/20100211T170303_Soaps_Spoilers_4-1_1265907797_large.jpg?1265909414
Information from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollyoaks#Criticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera
