Soap operas have lost the plot

Soap bombshells are nothing new, but the land of light TV entertainment was rocked by some real-life drama this week: ITV announced that Coronation Street and Emmerdale will be cutting back on episodes permanently next year. It was also revealed that viewing figures for EastEnders have plummeted from 30 million at its 1980s peak, to just four million. As one of those lost viewers, I’m not surprised.

I gave up watching soaps decades ago because the challenges of real-life adulthood made me less keen to soak up the fictional woes of others. But there was a time when I was hooked. I should have known my soap obsession was out of control when, during a family holiday in Greece in 1986, I hunted down a phone box to call friends and discover the outcome of that week’s big soap reveal: who had raped Brookside’s Sheila Grant? I then spent the rest of the trip shaking my head in disbelief that the taxi driver was the culprit.