Soap Opera Repeats Channel

So did Granada with Corrie for decades, it was a "continuing drama".

They are universally classed as soaps, though. Granted, they didn't boast multiple episodes a week, but in terms of content they very much were soap operas. The stories were serialised, focused on the characters' daily lives and were melodramatic in tone - all of which are the very textbook definition of a "soap opera". The only difference is they were in primetime and only on once a week. In every other respect, they were soap operas. Most traditional dramas contain stories that are largely concluded within the one episode with perhaps an overall story arc. Dallas and, in particular, Dynasty, contained stories than spanned multiple episodes if not seasons. In many respects they were continuing stories from start to finish.

Whilst I do understand where you're coming from with the long running ones to be more difficult to watch - there is people out their who would watch them and would pay for a streaming service that holds an archive of them. Corrie is essentially a dark comedy after all.

I think in this day and age comments about DVD shelving species are outdated nonsense, but if that really is an issue and they want a physical release use a specially designed hard drive.

I find this a bit hard to believe, the sixties Corrie is so different from the current era it's a completely different programme. They've repeated the first episode a few times on ITV and it's nothing like current Corrie. Most of the people who would be nostalgic for those days of Corrie are dead, and it means nothing to the current Corrie audience. You don't need to have seen episode one to understand episode one hundred thousand.

60s Corrie is different but common threads run throughout, it's ultimately the same show about people and how they interact with each-other, it's not fundamentally different in any more than that. A bit of humour, a bit of drama, a bit of reflection of life. It's a thread that runs through the entire show. A couple of characters from the 60s still remain in the show, and more only really left recently or have been around recently.

You might not need to see every episode of the show to understand it, but having seen them would give you a decent understanding of the history of the show and appreciation for the characters.

Also someone who was a kid/teenager in the 60s (back when people watch TV in family units) would be between 64 and 78 now, so I don't think it's fair to say most of them would be dead. And not to mention the tens of thousands of hardcore corrie fans who would never have seen these episodes but enjoy watching them first time round having hopped on board at a later date.

I still think maybe one of the streaming services should try it, streaming seems like a good way to deliver content that it's not economical to either repeat or release on home video, as long as it can be cleared anyway. As I said, UKTV Play's already doing it with The Bill, Britbox already have some classic Corrie and Emmerdale episodes, maybe they could try uploading the first year's worth of episodes as a trial or something to see how much interest they get.

I guess there is the question of to what extent The Bill was a soap, up until the late 90s at least, considering how self contained the episodes were, but it was multiple episodes a week all year round. In fact watching the early episodes, it's quite suprising how self contained it is, with episodes often ending abruptly and without a resolution, but the events of them never get mentioned again. I'm around half way through 1989, and apart from a couple of minor plotlines (like Tom Penny dealing with being shot and Bob Cryer's son causing death by dangerous driving, and a two parter episode about drug dealers selling to kids, which still ended without a proper resolution), nothing carries over from one episode to the next. It's a stark contrast to how it was in later years, even the mid-late 00s when it became more self contained again episodes still weren't isolated from each other in the way they were in the 80s and early 90s.

To me Britbox or a similar service would be the perfect home of this sort of stuff. A lot of mainstream British drama has a lot of parallels with British soap and a lot of soap actors have went on to appear in programmes that are already on Britbox anyway. Whilst the number who would sit and watch every episode of Corrie or Brookside is probably not massive surely the number interested in watching certain eras again/for the first time would be pretty decent, or at least profitable.

To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if ITV would block the rights for Corrie on a service like Britbox to be a full release simply out of fear of taking viewers away from the current show - and I'd kind of understand. That doesn't understand why the likes of Brookside/Family Affairs/Night and Day can't be put up.

I can, Family Affairs only last nine years and Night and Day lasted 18 months. I imagine the rights holders, in this case Fremantle and ITV Studios, wouldn't have had any any interest for them from streamers and that's also the case for Brookside.

I'd love to see Brookside from the start, I've seen so many clips, the odd episode and heard how much of a groundbreaking show it was then, but I can't really remember much from before Trevor Jordache getting murdered, and by all accounts the show had started its slow decline by then. I have vague memories of seeing an episode with one of the houses getting blown up on the same day as a wedding, must have been some time in the early 90s, anyone have any idea what storyline this actually was, or when it was?

I don't see why there'd be such a lack of interest for Brookside in particular though. It was massive when it was drawing in millions upon millions of viewers. It's not like these people died with the show.

Age demographic wise it's also most likely to appeal to younger viewers due to it's sensationalist nature - especially towards the end of it's run with body under the patio, seige and cult storylines.



Also re the bomb. Probably the Simon Howe cult storyline in 1994....

Probably safe to argue after the heydays of the 1990s things sort of went a bit surreal for Brookside, and a bit sensationalist. Didn't recover from that and the show seemed to limp on for years. Was quite interesting actually reading episode summaries on one of the fansites and whoever was writing them, apart from having a unique style, seemed absolutely convinced the entire show had been dead on its arse since 1999 and that it would do well to survive into 2003.

One far fetched story of course being the pandemic which forced the close into lockdown in the mid-90s. That would be interesting to see now in the context of what's been happening over the last few months.