When the pair were found guilty, a group of women's rights campaigners picketed the Liverpool offices of producer Phil Redmond.EmmerdaleZoe Tate (Leah Bracknell) was revealed as a lesbian as part of the soap's inclination towards racier and more controversial (rating-boosting) storylines. And, last year, the trial of Beth and her mother Mandy for the "body under the patio" murder was sensationally stretched over five consecutive nights, and "guilty" and "not guilty" verdicts were filmed to maintain plot secrecy. While a BBC spokesman insisted that regular viewers would not be surprised by the scene - which came after months of soul-searching on Tony's part - an insider said: "There are viewers who won't be expecting to see this kind of material at that time and the BBC doesn't want to startle them."Nine years ago, EastEnders showed British soap's first gay kiss, between Colin (Michael Cashman) and his boyfriend, Barry, and last year sent bedsit- sharers Binnie and Della off to explore their emergent lesbian feelings in Ibiza.BrooksideLast month the show screened the first scenes of incest in British soap history, the culmination of a three-month storyline in which brother and sister Nat (John Sandford) and Georgia (Helen Grace) tried to contain their mutual desire.In 1994, it broadcast British soap's first lesbian kiss, between best friends Beth (Anna Friel) and Margaret (Nicola Stephenson). But ratings fell, and at the end of the next series Duffy returned, Bobby's death (and the ensuing 26 episodes) being explained away as the rather lengthy dream of his wife, Pam. The ArchersGrace Archer, in the mother all of violent soap deaths, was burnt to a crisp in a stable fire, traumatising the nation for days. The night on which it was broadcast - 22 September 1955 - was the night ITV went on air, and the BBC was accused of trying to spoil its launch with the storyline.In 1994, the death of Mark Hebden in a car crash was also greeted with much dismay, and a BBC spokesman revealed that many listeners had phoned in to suggest other characters they would rather have had killed off.EastEndersLast month a gay kiss between Tony (Mark Homer) and Simon (Andrew Lynford) was shown more than an hour before the 9pm watershed, but had been cut from an original two seconds to a mere half-second.
Dallas When Patrick Duffy quit to pursue alternative roles, the scriptwriters killed off his character, Bobby Ewing (above), in a hit-and-run accident that formed the climax of the show's 1986 season. So if the fictional Ellen wants to come out shall we take it that the real Ellen is also coming out? Or is this all just a sophisticated come-on - that somehow, somewhere, there's a real person in all this pretence? As if.. The Larry Sanders Show, Seinfeld and Roseanne are about the world of television, of celebrity - in other words about themselves As is Ellen. Give that girl her own show.Inevitably this kind of blurring between character and actor that much popular television tempts its audiences with has become a subject in itself for many American writers.
Yet we continue to invest these national narratives with a realism that they very rarely possess. TV realism, it is worth reminding ourselves, is always relative. Eastenders is realistic compared not to real life but to The X-Files. Our infatuation with soap stars therefore becomes a quest for further authentication. Some even oblige, such as Martine McCutcheon, who plays the marvellous Tiffany and who recently demanded to be flown from St Tropez to Ibiza "I want somewhere with a decent disco".
If you live in Ramsay Street, for instance, your chances of falling into a coma are enormously high; if you live in Brookside Close, maniacs, religious cults and Jimmy Corkhill lurk in every corner. If you live in Albert Square you are destined to spend every night of your life in the Queen Vic. None of this is likely, so why do we continue to pretend that it is? The most memorable episodes of a soap are nearly always the ones where you feel the writer chafing against the formulaic constraints of the medium. We are caught somewhere between the meta-fictional heights of the Eighties soaps like Dynasty and some earnest public health pronouncement.Soaps which have traditionally been defined as "closed communities in crisis" are always imagined communities. It is as if what can be imagined at the moment is clearly beyond the boundary of any one community, which is why scriptwriters are straining our credulity. Such a spectacle requires even more than the average suspension of belief.