Crossroads was cancelled twice Night and Day ended cause it was weird and Brookside was treated very badly till it was put out of it's misery I would like to see Hollyoaks end the show is preachy woke and has no charm anymore is full of murderers and is a slog to sit through.
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Angela Channing
Telly Talk Veteran
It never should have happened. It had huge audience figures and it felt that they were deliberately trying to run it into the ground so they could have a reason to cancel it. Viewers remained loyal so they cancelled it anyway. No subsequent show broadcast in that timeslot achieved the ratings that Crossroads did.
I quite enjoyed the 01 to 02 version, killing off Jill was a mistake and not resolving the cliffhanger did Adam die in the fire? Did Phil go to prison? and making it a campy UK Dynasty was not the way to go.
Angela Channing
Telly Talk Veteran
I gave up on the revival series after about a month. It just didn't feel like Crossroads and Jill Chance wasn't given a prominent enough role and it just felt like she was only included to provide a connection with the original series.
Plus Adam and Doris as the oldest cleaning lady.
Walford Boy
Telly Talk Addict
I think the way EE is hemorrhaging viewers it will be the first out of the big 3 to go, the only saving grace is the BBC have nothing to replace it with and the obscene amount of money spent on the new set. I could see EE gone by 2027.
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Carrie Fairchild
Telly Talk Star
Yes, regardless of ratings and/or quality, the huge investment in the new set will keep it on air for some time to come.
On this theme in general, again, the way people are viewing soaps has changed. Yesterday, the Christmas Day episodes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale were both released on the ITV Hub from early morning before their primetime screening on ITV last night. I think we'll see more of this as time goes on as networks adapt to newer viewing habits. The three soaps were still in the Top 10 live ratings for Christmas Day (8th - Corrie, 9th - ED & 10th - EE) with them all getting around 3m viewers. Not the stellar ratings of years past but they're still Top 10 shows.
Ref Doris, Kathy Staff had to be written out of Last Of The Summer Wine so her character Nora Batty was sent off to Australia.
When Crossroads never worked out, Kathy returned to LOTSW.
Alan J W Bell (the producer of LOTSW) though pretended the Australia thing with Nora never happened after Kathy came back, as it was never mentioned. (Was Bell peed off with Kathy for taking the Crossroads role?)
Barbara Fan
Admin
Cant believe how low the ratings were on Xmas day = like 3 million gets you in the top 10!
sign of the times, I didnt watch anything Live on TV but dug out Witness with Harrison Ford instead!
sign of the times, I didnt watch anything Live on TV but dug out Witness with Harrison Ford instead!
Carrie Fairchild
Telly Talk Star
I don't think the channels bother rolling out the big guns on Christmas Day anymore because viewing habits / ratings have changed. If you look across the 5 main channels in the UK, Terry Pratchett's The Abominable Snow Baby on Channel 4 was the only unique programme of the evening. Everything else was just festive specials of shows that are on throughout the year anyway (Strictly, The Masked Singer, Bake Off, Blankety Blank). I know Gogglebox is popular but Channel 4 airing a 2 hour compilation of the best bits of 2021 at 9pm on Christmas Day just feels lazy.
With Strictly, the Christmas special is pre-recorded long in advance, as you can tell viewers can't call in or text for the winner like with the normal show.
Not that they would be able to anyway.
Hollyoaks is only the big ratings puller for E4 too, which helps. Don't think their other shows get the same, except for Made in Chelsea.
Some of their US imports like The 100 and Batwoman have been shunted from primetime to post midnight because the ratings are dire. To add, although they showed the final seasons of Supernatural, they haven't picked up the reboot of Walker despite the fact it's a CW show and stars Jared Padalecki. (The fact CBS Justice is airing the original Chuck Norris series works against the Padalecki series too getting a UK airing, given the latter has none of the originals making cameos).
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Julia's Gun
Telly Talk Well-Known Member
I'd love to see Eastenders replaced, with a new soap that's based half in London and half in Manchester, kind of like a UK Sons & Daughters for the 2020s. It would keep with the BBC's remit of moving more of its programming out of the capital, but have rival families somehow linked with half the cast being Mancunian, and the others living in London.
The concept of Eastenders has been so out of date now for decades. It's an area and community that no longer exists, if it ever really did in the first place, and is now a redeveloped Olympic Park. I'd put that show out of its misery, but maybe spin-off a couple of the more popular characters into this new soap.
I also think 2-3 times a week is plenty for a soap. More than this just waters down the quality too much, with dubious acting and hasty, contrived writing as a result. Out of the 4 soaps I feel Eastenders comes off the worst for this, to the point of being mostly unwatchable to me now.
Walford Boy
Telly Talk Addict
It's quite interesting that after the Christmas Day episode leading up to the New Year EE has been the best soap out of the big 3 by a country mile, CS being the worse. It has had a new lease of life, will this continue? well we do have a new producer starting in 2022 Chris Clenshaw.
The BBC did co-produce a soap in 1995 with Granada TV, the makers of Coronation Street, called Castles (some of the Coronation Street writers and producers actually worked on it).
It was a 2nd attempt by the BBC to have another soap after Eldorado flopped. Burnt by Eldorado, Castles was only given a 26 episode order by the BBC as opposed to a year, with a option to extend if successful.
But not even well known faces like Tony Doyle could make it work. Midway due to poor ratings, it was shunted from the pre Nine O'Clock News slot it occupied on Tuesday and Thursday nights to new slots on Sunday and Monday at 7pm where it had to compete with established shows like Wish You Were Here........?. And hence it ended. (The omnibus aired Monday afternoons post Neighbours on BBC1, but after the timeslot switch, aired on Wednesday afternoons actually against Neighbours on BBC2, and because of Wimbledon, sometimes the omnibus edition would not air and repeats would go out at weird slots like 10.30am on BBC1 or BBC2.)
(Stephen Moyer, who played Martin Franks in the soap, went on to better things afterwards).
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Carrie Fairchild
Telly Talk Star
In addition to this, I've only just seen a promo announcing that Hollyoaks released all 8 of it's Christmas episodes on the All4 streaming service on December 17th as a "festive first look" boxset. On further reading, I see this is the third year running that they've released their Christmas episodes in this way.
darkshadows38
Telly Talk Star
i don't watch them unless it's Dark Shadows lol but it doesn't matter to me if they are but there are plenty of Actors and Actress's who have said throughout the years
is that Soaps weather you like them or hate them are training grounds for actors and well they are right it's not that hard to look up the list of actors/actresses who started out in soaps i think James Earl Jones is one that did one at one time back in the day for example. i think Martin Sheen i want to say did one as well the list is freaking huge so you get what i'm saying so if they are gone so is the training ground to a lot of hungry actors that not only need the money to pay rent
but to learn their craft as well. Elizabeth Winstead as you well know started out on Passions and she was i think f.... terrible on it i only saw the first few months of the show and she was so painful to watch on how bad she was but as the years went on outside of that she's gotten better when she did Live free or Die Hard (2007) she was okay in it but she's since became a better actress my point is you gotta start somewhere
is that Soaps weather you like them or hate them are training grounds for actors and well they are right it's not that hard to look up the list of actors/actresses who started out in soaps i think James Earl Jones is one that did one at one time back in the day for example. i think Martin Sheen i want to say did one as well the list is freaking huge so you get what i'm saying so if they are gone so is the training ground to a lot of hungry actors that not only need the money to pay rent
but to learn their craft as well. Elizabeth Winstead as you well know started out on Passions and she was i think f.... terrible on it i only saw the first few months of the show and she was so painful to watch on how bad she was but as the years went on outside of that she's gotten better when she did Live free or Die Hard (2007) she was okay in it but she's since became a better actress my point is you gotta start somewhere
Ray Liotta was in Another World, and Julienne Moore was in As the World Turns. In fact, Julienne went back to the show for a bit when she heard it was ending.
darkshadows38
Telly Talk Star
see what i mean ?
pete lashmar
Telly Talk Addict
I don't watch any of the current TV soaps and I think the reason that ratings are dropping so quickly is simply because TV is deluged with them.
If EastEnders, Corrie & Emmerdale went back to 2 episodes a week they may be able to create something that appeals to more people, but most people are not going nto put their lives on hold to watch the current amount of episodes every week. That said, ITV could not afford to fill the slots with anything if they cut the number of episodes down - and there's the answer really, the soaps are cheap and attract advertisers.
With the multi million new EastEnders set still being built I can't see the BBC pulling the show anytime in the next 10 years, plus they are developing a new northern based soap, the details of which are not yet known.
For me UK TV has almost become Strip scheduled TV...the same shows on the same days at the same times 7 days a week - there just doesn't seem to be a huge amount of variance anymore and that has become so deadly dull and boring.
And yet streaming channels are thriving so much without any soaps that run throughout the year whatsoever.
If EastEnders, Corrie & Emmerdale went back to 2 episodes a week they may be able to create something that appeals to more people, but most people are not going nto put their lives on hold to watch the current amount of episodes every week. That said, ITV could not afford to fill the slots with anything if they cut the number of episodes down - and there's the answer really, the soaps are cheap and attract advertisers.
With the multi million new EastEnders set still being built I can't see the BBC pulling the show anytime in the next 10 years, plus they are developing a new northern based soap, the details of which are not yet known.
For me UK TV has almost become Strip scheduled TV...the same shows on the same days at the same times 7 days a week - there just doesn't seem to be a huge amount of variance anymore and that has become so deadly dull and boring.
And yet streaming channels are thriving so much without any soaps that run throughout the year whatsoever.