RIVER CITY, 21 May 2013 – soap at its best. Just don’t call it soap

Why do we watch soaps? I guess one of the reasons is they reflect our lives while turning the dial up a notch or two. Soap stories play out in the domestic realm, in the houses, flats, streets and squares that we all recognise, but they play out in a big way, a world apart from our own humdrum lives (hopefully).

And like any good story, a good soap story will involve characters who are faced with dilemmas, tough choices that we would struggle with if we were faced with them ourselves. Soaps allow us to vicariously experience the consequences of making the wrong choices in life.

Like the decision to sleep with somebody else when you’re married. This decision, and the terrible consequences it has for all involved, was the focus of last week’s episode of the BBC One Scotland drama, River City.

The A-story of the episode sees Bob Adams (played by Stephen Purdon) coming to understand that his wife, Stella (Keira Lucchesi), has not only slept with their friend, Stevie (Paul-James Corrigan), but that the pair are also in love. As anyone who follows the show knows, poor Bob doesn’t have much luck with women (an understatement if there ever was one), so while this latest tragedy in his love-life might not come as a huge surprise, it has to endear the lovable loser to the viewers’ hearts just that little bit more.

What makes the deception even more tragic is that Bob knows his lack of attention towards Stella caused her to stray into Stevie’s arms. Bob’s been in a bad place recently and his depression has seen him withdraw from the world and from his wife. Add to this that the depression was triggered by the death of his best friend and awfulness of the situation is only compounded.

Stephen Purdon plays Bob Adams

River City, BBC One Scotland, Tuesday 21/5/13, 8pm

This really is drama at its best; layered, emotionally engaging and full of grey areas. It is a story that we can easily relate to but one that we would hope not to have to go through ourselves.

Which can also be said of the B-story of the episode, which concerned two sisters and the impact on their lives of their father’s worsening dementia.

Gina (Libby McArthur) and Eileen (Deirdre Davis), together with their dad, Malcolm (Johnny Beattie), have been at the heart of River City since the very first episode in 2002. To see the sisters struggling to cope with Malcolm’s illness while trying to maintain their own relationships is heartbreaking – and again, great drama.

Add to this a C- story (closely tied-in with the A-story) that has matriarch Scarlett Mullen (Sally Howitt) struggling not to interfere with her beloved son Bob’s marriage crisis and writer Viv Adam gives us all the ingredients of a classic soap episode.

Only River City isn’t a soap, it’s a one-hour continuing drama. The decision was made in 2007 to combine what used to be two half-hour episodes, aired twice a week, into a single one-hour episode transmitted on a Tuesday evening, and since then River City hasn’t officially been a soap. And it’s been clear that from this time, the show has struggled to find a new identity; genre dictates that a soap is 30-minutes long, 60-minute continuing dramas in the slot River City occupies are traditionally precinct dramas like Casualty or Holby. River City is none of these.

For me, and I suspect that for many of the fans of the show who have watched from the beginning, the struggle is a false one – when I watch River City, I am watching a soap. It might be one-hour long, it might be on only one evening a week (though repeated at the weekend), but it is a soap. Soap is in the DNA of the show.

What’s really important isn’t how River City is seen, but it’s that people get to see it. It always grated with me when watching the British Soap Awards (last shown on ITV on Sunday 19 May) that River City was never included, even when it was 30-minutes long, as it’s only shown on BBC One Scotland.

Until it’s aired on network BBC, the real tragedy is that viewers in the rest of the UK won’t be able to enjoy the dramatic goings-on among the Shieldinch community. Because when it is at its best, River City is as good as, even better than, any of the soaps that won awards last Sunday. Just don’t call it soap.