A soap opera, or soap for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored by soap manufacturers. The term was preceded by "horse opera", a derogatory term for low-budget Westerns.
Emmerdale is a British soap opera that is broadcast on ITV1. The show is set in Emmerdale, a fictional village in the Yorkshire Dales. Created by Kevin Laffan, Emmerdale Farm was first broadcast on 16 October 1972. Interior scenes have been filmed at the Leeds Studios since its inception. Exterior scenes were first filmed in Arncliffe in Littondale, and the series may have taken its name from Amerdale, an ancient name of Littondale. Exterior scenes were later shot at Esholt, but are now shot at a purpose-built set on the Harewood estate. The programme is broadcast in every ITV region.
ITV2 is a British free-to-air television channel owned by ITV Digital Channels, a division of ITV plc. It was launched on 7 December 1998. For a number of years, it had the largest audience share after the five analogue terrestrial stations, a claim now held by its sister service ITV3 both of which are freely available to a majority of households.
The Donna Reed Show is an American sitcom starring Donna Reed as the middle-class housewife Donna Stone. Carl Betz co-stars as her pediatrician husband Dr. Alex Stone, and Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen as their teenage children, Mary and Jeff. The show originally aired on ABC from September 24, 1958, to March 19, 1966.
The Rose d'Or is an international awards festival in entertainment broadcasting and programming. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) first acquired the Rose d’Or in 1961, when it was created by Swiss Television in the lakeside city of Montreux. The awards stayed with the EBU for almost 40 years. The EBU re-acquired the awards in 2013 and successfully re-launched the event that year in Brussels, then relocated to Berlin from 2014 to 2018.
Wife Swap is a British reality television programme produced by independent television production company RDF Media and created by Stephen Lambert for Channel 4, first broadcast in 2003 and ran for 7 years before being cancelled. The show returned for a one-off special episode on 15 June 2017.
A Country Practice is an Australian television soap opera which broadcast on the Seven Network from 18 November 1981 until 5 November 1993, airing at 7:30 pm on Monday and Tuesday evenings. Altogether, 14 seasons and 1,058 episodes were produced. The show was produced at the ATN-7's production facility at Epping, New South Wales,
Footballers' Wives is a British television drama about fictional Premier League football club Earls Park F.C., its players, and their wives, broadcast on ITV from 2002 to 2006. The show initially focuses on three very different couples, but from the third series onward revolves around a complex love triangle between Tanya Turner, Amber Gates, and Conrad Gates.
Egoli: Place of Gold was a bilingual South African soap opera which first aired on M-Net on 6 April 1992. South African television's first daily soap opera, on 3 December 1999 Egoli became the first South African television programme in any genre to reach 2,000 episodes. As of 3 August 2007, 4,000 episodes had aired. Egoli: Place of Gold aired its final episode on 31 March 2010, after 18 years of acting from South African and international actors.
The Riordans was the second Irish television drama serial made by Raidio Telefís Éireann. It ran from 1965 to 1979 and was set in the fictional townland of Leestown in County Kilkenny. Its location filming with Outside Broadcast Units, rather than using only TV studios, broke the mould of broadcasting in the soap opera genre and inspired the creation of its British equivalent, Emmerdale Farm by Yorkshire Television in 1972.
Big Love is an American drama television series that aired on HBO from March 12, 2006 to March 20, 2011. It stars Bill Paxton as the patriarch of a fundamentalist Mormon family in contemporary Utah that practices polygamy, with Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny, and Ginnifer Goodwin portraying his wives. The series charts the family's life in and out of the public sphere in their Salt Lake City suburb, as well as their associations with a fundamentalist compound in the area. It features key supporting performances from Amanda Seyfried, Grace Zabriskie, Daveigh Chase, Matt Ross, Mary Kay Place, Bruce Dern, Melora Walters, and Harry Dean Stanton.
The Clear Horizon is an American soap opera which ran on CBS Daytime from July 11, 1960 to March 10, 1961 and February 26 to June 15, 1962. Manya Starr created the program and was its head writer.
Paul Marquess is a television producer from Belfast, Northern Ireland. His credits include Brookside, The Bill, Family Affairs, Hollyoaks, Crime Stories, Suspects and Hope Street. He also originated the idea for the series Footballers' Wives. He currently holds the post of managing director of Newman Street, a label of Fremantlemedia.
Army Wives is an American drama television series that followed the lives of four army wives, one army husband, and their families. The series premiered on Lifetime on June 3, 2007, and ran for seven seasons, ending on June 9, 2013. The show had the largest series premiere in Lifetime's 23-year history, and the largest viewership in the 10:00 pm to 11:00 pm time slot since December 2007 for Lifetime. It received favorable reviews and several award nominations, and won five ASCAP Awards and one Gracie Allen Award.
Out of the Blue is an Australian serial drama commissioned by the BBC, produced by Australia's Southern Star Entertainment. It began screening on BBC One on weekday afternoons on 28 April 2008. The programme attracted lower than desired ratings figures, prompting the broadcaster to shift it to its second channel BBC Two from 19 May 2008. The BBC eventually decided not to commission a second series, and the final episode aired on 29 January 2009. The rights to show the first series in Australia were purchased by Network Ten, while in the UK, Channel 5 has picked up the repeat rights to Out of the Blue, and began airing all 130 episodes on digital sister channel Fiver in February 2009.
Gullruten is an annual award for the Norwegian TV industry, founded in 1998 by Norske Film- og TV-produsenters forening. The awarding committee has representatives from the major national TV companies, NRK, TV 2, TV3 and TVNorge. In 1998, the show was hosted by Nadia Hasnaoui, and from 1999 to 2012, by Dorthe Skappel. From 2013, the show has been hosted by Henriette Steenstrup and John Brungot.
Sister Wives is an American reality television series broadcast on TLC that premiered on September 26, 2010. The show documents the life of a polygamist family that becomes essentially monogamist in later seasons, which includes father Kody Brown, his four wives, and their 18 children. The family began the series living in Lehi, Utah but has since moved to Las Vegas in 2011 and the unincorporated township of Baderville, Arizona in mid-2018.
Days of Our Lives is an American television soap opera that streams on the streaming service Peacock. The soap, which aired on the American television network NBC from 1965 to 2022, is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday since November 8, 1965. A co-production of Corday Productions and Sony Pictures Television, the series was created by husband-and-wife team Ted Corday and Betty Corday. During Days of Our Lives' early years, Irna Phillips served as a story editor for the program and many of the show's earliest storylines were written by William J. Bell, who would depart the series in 1975 to focus full-time on The Young and the Restless, which he created for CBS in 1973. Following the 2007 cancellation of Passions, Days of Our Lives remained the only soap opera airing on NBC. On August 3, 2022, NBCUniversal announced that it would relocate the series exclusively to its Peacock streaming service beginning September 12 after 57 years on the network and leaving NBC as the only Big Three network without a daytime serial.
Wife Swap is an American reality television program that was first broadcast on ABC in 2004 based on the British show with the same name. In the program, two families, usually from different social classes and lifestyles, swap wives/mothers – and sometimes husbands – for two weeks. Actor John Schwab narrated the program on ABC from 2004 to 2010.
The Return of Superman is a South Korean reality-variety show that airs on KBS2. The Return of Superman used to be one of the two segments on Happy Sunday. The original three episodes pilot aired as a Chuseok holiday special from September 19 till September 21 of 2013, starring Lee Hwi-jae, Choo Sung-hoon, Jang Hyun-sung. The show is narrated by entertainer/singer Yuk Joong-wan and actress So Yoo-jin.
