It doesnt take up alot of brain to watch any of the soaps and thats why they are so enjoyable.  Sit down with a plate ful of dinner, nice cup of tea, relax and enjoy the story.  Its like reading a chapter of your book every day but watching on the screen instead.

The only thing I dont enjoy is when they run sagas about people dying.  We watch the soaps to take us out of ourselves not to make us depressed.  We've all nursed someone dying of cancer, we've all helped out with our mentally and physically handicapped family members or friends - most know what pain and hardship someone goes through with breast cancer - who wants to relive each stage of their illness?  I just turn it off.  It doesnt really help anyone - it just reminds us of what we've had or what we've got to come and theres plenty of groups all over the country for cancer and heart attack and other physical diseases.

The only exception I would make to this is the child abuse story lines may help some children to report their own abuse or may help a battered woman to seek support because a life could be saved.  This problem is not widely spoken about or advertised like the major illnesses and there isnt a medium that can get through to people at risk apart from programmes they are likely to watch.   People are probably frightened to go to the police or even report it to their GP because they do not know what the consequences will be.  Acting out a few of them in a soap may be just the trigger they need to help themselves.

Mostly though, I enjoy the banter, the relationship problems and most of the storylines.

 

i fully agree with you Lauren222. I have helped a number of my friends who have the terrible illness Schizzophrenia and it is very hard sometimes to cope with for friends and family of the sufferers of this disorder and soaps such as corronation street, Emmerdale and others i won't mention are a way of almost an 'escape' from the reality of this world.

My closest mate went through a very bad time when he was developing schizzophrenia and believe me, it was not a nice thing to go through for him or even for me as his best mate, it was very upsetting to see one of my closest mates go through this, believe me, and the. TV Programmes i watched are really just 'escapism' and thank god that they are as i am sure a lot of carers / supporters / friens of people or even  any physical, mental or disability themselves would regard the TV Programmes as almost an 'escape from reality' for however long the programmes are on.

I think TV Can be very responsible for some fantastic shows, such as corronation street, for example and in my view i think Emmerdale & Corronation Street are the best because they  mixes drama and comedy with edge-of-the-seat moments  in a perfect mix for a programme and i think some other soaps on the other channels  (no names mentioned) should take note.

Yes I agree with all you have written.  These soaps are a form of escapism - like reading part of a book every night that doesnt require alot of brain work.  They help to relieve stress, especially if you are a 24-hour carer for someone dying of cancer or looking after someone with mental health problems or a debilitating handicap which means you have to be on call all the time.  To just sit down and enjoy this 'rubbish' for an hour is sometimes the only 'escapeism' that some carers get.  I personally am not in that position now - I just watch them while I eat dinner and relax - but I have been and the last thing I want to do is watch step by step all the stages of someone dying from cancer when Im going through it myself!