soap opera network soap writers and directors

Indeed, narrativising social issues can, when done well, spark a sea change in public opinion. Since the birth of broadcasting, Social issues and soap operas have become a veritable chicken-and-egg: night after night, writers dictate the topic of discussion in living rooms nationwide, but their popularity hinges on the skill and nuance with which they represent these talking points. Soap writers trade in social issues: audiences want to be entertained, but this must take the shape of story-lines that represent and reflect areas of cultural concern back at the viewer. Advances in the medicinal cannabis movement seem to have caught the eye of television executives, who now appear poised to induct medicinal cannabis into the canon of social issues in soap operas.

However, Coronation Street insiders have promised a broad and even handed approach to the subject, which they have described themselves as ‘ a hot topic‘. A spliff in the hand has become shorthand for compromised morals, a prop for peers pressuring peers. In soap operas, illicit drug consumption is typically represented in one of two forms: as either the sinister signifier of youth-led-astray, or as the stuff of comedic fodder.

With the revelation that a storyline exploring the medicinal use of cannabis will air on Coronation Street in February, the debate on the state of the UK’s drug policy is set to go primetime.

Soap opera network soap writers and directors