Believe it or not soap operas are the most popular thing on TV right now. Usually found sitting in the prime time slots of weeknights, like an unwanted tramp pondering around the Chelsea flower show looking for a damp cigarette, soaps feed on the poor souls who can’t leave the house on a school night.
Some people have their favourite, whether it be BBC’s Eastenders, ITV’s Coronation Street, Five’s Neighbours or Channel 4’s…. wait what do Channel 4 have? Not Brookside the other one. Oh yes Hollyoaks. I’m not even going to get into Hollyoaks right now but for a brief synopsis it’s thirteen out of work manikin doppelgangers talking to each other about how to make an omelette using only left over Shreddies and a broken wine glass. Titillating stuff.
Yes soaps have been wasting our precious hours on this Earth for quite a while now and to be honest I just don’t understand why they’re still going. Well, they get such high ratings so it isn’t a massive surprise actually. It’s like some sort of hypnotic monotony that, if your subjected to it too often, will take over your body and force you to sit and watch every night until you start empathising with the characters on-screen as if they were real family members. No you cannot adopt them. People get so obsessed with these things to the point they think they are actually real. But I must stress, they are not.
I know a few people who don’t watch the soaps themselves but stay updated with what’s going on via a tabloid newspaper with nothing else better to do then tell their hard working journalists to write about Dev’s love life or how many times Grant blinked in last night’s episode. I say journalists but to be honest it’s just a few badgers and a Speak & Spell.
Not all soaps are bad though. My favourite, which I have to admit I follow in the tabloids, is the one about the footballers. I’ve forgotten what it’s called but it was on over the summer, they went on holiday to South Africa, Adrian Chiles was in it. Doesn’t matter. Anyway I’ve loved this soap for a while now and yes I’ve got my favourite characters I like to follow.
We’ve been treated to some great storylines over the years. Remember when Fergie kicked that boot at Beckham? It was so intense. When Glen Johnson was caught stealing from B&Q. I was shocked. How about when Martin Keown jumped around on Ruud van Nistelrooy. I always knew he was a baddie. The writing is so fantastic, you would actually believe that footballers are idiots! Recently though I feel the scriptwriters have tried to up their game but it‘s gotten a little too far-fetched. It started when they gave Darren Bent a Twitter page to enhance audience interaction. That didn’t go down too well. They had to write him out of it in the end and the easiest way to do that was to send him off to Sunderland. Unfortunate, as I thought his character had potential.
After that they subjected us to that wearisome love triangle storyline with Wayne Bridge and John Terry. Team-mates at club level and international level, married man and general love-rat Terry stabbed Bridgey in the back and slept with his ex girlfriend and mother of his son, Vanessa. It sent shockwaves throughout the world, time stood still, people were starting to question not only Terry but themselves. It was gripping stuff. Alright it was over the top but the masses loved it.
They did drag it out for far too long though. There was the drawn out non-handshake, merchandising went mad with the creation of Team Bridge and Team Terry t-shirts (one of which didn’t sell too well) and then they wrapped it all up by having Terry’s wife actually take him back and sending Bridge off to football purgatory (Manchester City). Rubbish ending that. They never even told us what happened to the kids, oh wait I forgot, nobody cares about them.
Since then though we’ve kind of been starved of a good storyline. Nothing to get your teeth into really. Gazza turned up to a stand-off with a KFC bargain bucket, they tried to re-create the non-handshake and there were some boring changing room bust ups in the South African holiday special. Nothing other than that. But lo and behold the scriptwriters have gone back to one of the show’s favourite characters: Wayne Rooney.
Now, I don’t want to have a go at the writers but they’ve gone with another prostitute story for him. I’ll give you the gist: Wayne, fresh from entertaining and generally wowing audiences over the summer in Shrek Forever After, has once again been found cheating on Princess Fiona whilst she was pregnant with his son. He did so in a five-star hotel with a prostitute, who stayed quiet for a while only to reveal her client’s evil intentions to a group of badgers in exchange for a pot of money and a free lunch.
Not the best storyline I’m sure you’ll agree, Wayne’s been put in this situation before with some other prostitute. Now, in that storyline Fiona took him back and that was that really. So you’d expect her to dump him this time round. It’s hard to judge, there’s been a few cheating storylines recently: Ashley Cole, a man who says ‘lol’, ‘rofl’ and ends every sentence in a conversation by saying ‘text back kiss kiss’, has recently divorced his handbag Cheryl; and Peter Crouch was involved in something but that storyline died a horrible death due to lack of interest.
I for one hope that whatever she decides to do it’s dealt with quickly as I’m bored of the cheating stories now. As long as Wayne doesn’t do too many speeches to the media I don’t care what happens to him. I don’t think he’s allowed anymore anyway. Ofcom get inundated with calls every time he opens his festering hell-hole of a mouth. We have a watershed for a reason! I want better stories guys, c’mon, you guys used to be great. I remember when Adrian Mutu was forced to pay his former employer £14 million for shovelling narcotics into his nostrils with a trowel. Such an expensive habit. Or when Ben Thatcher straight up assaulted Pedro Mendes and we had Pedro-cam for about three weeks until something better came up. Bring back those days.
It’s just lazy writing really. We, as fans of this long-running soap, expect more. In tonight's episode Wayne and friends are playing away in Switzerland and I expect someone to be hit by a steel chair at the very least. Don’t worry, it’s on Sky tonight so you won’t miss Corrie.
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