Although I'm not of a fan of soaps for reasons Sandra and gmax have already given, plus the facts that the stories never seem to be resolved and they give the characters totally unbelievable lives, they do have a place on television. After all, the 11 million or so who regularly tune in to Eastenders, Corrie, The Bill and the rest all pay their television licence and are entitled to get something out of it.
What saddens me is that the remainder of the TV licence payers don't get their fair share. All the other programmes are dominated by celebrity and talent shows, having gaps filled by vox pop programmes. A few years ago all the dramas seemed to feature James Nesbitt, now it's Marc Warren. There are very few programmes which address culture vultures other than cheap, boring, panel discussions which appear to be designed to fill a hole in the schedules late at night. ITV's South Bank Show is the closest we get to a quality culture programme on terrestrial TV, but even that fails to measure up to Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time on Radio 4. The only nod from BBC1 is Film 200X fronted by the ubiquitous Jonafon Woss who knows nothing about the arts from what I can make out. How sad that Barry Norman was put out to pasture. How sad that the format of Film 200X has remained unchanged since his days. If I want to get a decent film review, I download the Mark Kermode podcast from Radio 5's Simon Mayo. It's the same if I want a book review. Whoever would have thought that Simon Mayo would be leading the BBCs cultural output? Nevertheless, that seems to be the sad state of affairs nowadays.
