Don’t Forget Your Friends - in soap, family matters, but it’s good to have friends too

The arrival of new families has been in the soap-related news recently, first with the appearance of the extended Carter family in EastEnders, then with the announcement that Coronation Street is soon to get its first Muslim family in the show’s history.

Traditionally, family has always been at the heart of soap stories (and a lot of other TV drama too – the wonderful Game of Thrones is all about rival families, albeit on a larger scale and with fancier costumes than you’ll find in most soaps) and it’s not difficult to understand why; familial relationships provide the potential for conflict that many other relationships don’t as they are build on the most powerful bonds.

And conflict is the lifeblood of drama; it fuels the engine that drives drama. Hence the reason for the central role of families and family life in soap opera set-ups and stories.

But as we all know, it’s good to have friends. And this is as much true in drama as it is in life. TV soap writers and producers have understood this from the earliest days of the genre: think of Ena Sharples gossiping with Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst in the snug of the Rovers Return in only the second episode of Coronation Street.

For a start, where do you go when you need to talk to someone about the problems you’re having with your family (or your lover, or your enemy)? You go to a friend. Everybody needs a trusted confidant, someone to spill your deep, dark thoughts and feelings to, and soap characters are no different.

This can actually be pretty handy if you’re a soap writer and need to let the audience in on a troubled character’s emotional turmoil; you could have them muttering to themselves about the desire to murder a treacherous sibling or turning to camera to do the same, but having them tell a friend is ultimately more believable and satisfactory.

Another thing a focus on friendship offers is relief from the very conflict that’s needed to drive stories. It’s good to be able to pull back from the problems, arguments and strife and experience a little lightness, warmth and humour. That’s why it’s healthy to spend time in Streetcars with Lloyd, Steve and Eileen, now we’re fretting about Roy’s whereabouts, just like it was good to hang out with Minty and Garry in the Arches when there was a lot of yelling going on in the Queen Vic.

So friends can offer the promise of positivity amid the darkness of a dramatic life; they can back you up in the midst of family failings, like Fatboy being there for Tamwar in EastEnders just now (or Bronn being there for Tyrion in Game of Thrones for that matter) and they can also help save you from yourself, as Bob Adams did with his hapless pal Deek Henderson in one my episodes of BBC One Scotland’s River City, when Deek spiralled out of control and into a dark place after the death of his mother.

But because of the very fact that characters do open up to their friends and trust them with their innermost secrets, this can lead to the possibility of that trust being broken. Which is great for creating dramatic tension: we might need to unburden ourselves to a pal but what might they do with those dark secrets in the future? Can we trust them? Will they betray us?

And what if the confidant learns something they didn’t want to hear, that a friend has done something illegal perhaps? The moral dilemma that this kind of situation generates is often the thing that really grabs an audience and pulls them into the drama; we lean forward in our seats as we experience the character’s emotional and ethical struggle for ourselves.

Perhaps one of the finest examples of this kind of moral struggle happened when a much-loved soap character was asked to do something illegal and against her every belief and principle for her closest friend. We surely all remember the trauma experienced by Dot when Ethel, suffering from cancer, asked her to assist in her death. This was a friendship so important, so solidly build on love and trust, that Dot’s steadfast religious beliefs had to buckle under the strain of the request. And it made great viewing.

So it’s clear that significant friendships, like family relationships, are vital in drama, especially soap.

It’s great that the Carter family have been such a successful addition to EastEnders; I just hope that we see each of them develop strong bonds outside of the family over the coming months. This has already started to an extent, with Johnny’s budding friendship with Whitney (now all that initial confusion has been dealt with!) and the tentative bond developing between Linda and Sharon – something that’s bound to bring them as much strife as joy.

As the rest of Kal Nazir’s family hasn’t appeared yet, it’s too early to say how the Coronation Street story team will handle their friendships. But, for me, it’s a good sign that the introduction of this new family has started not with them arriving en masse, but with Kal and his growing bond with Dev. But who knows where this new friendship will take the pair, especially as they have begun to mix it with business? We can only keep watching to find out.

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.