Television
Off to sunny Spain
Martyn Harris
The great thing about soap opera is the snail's pace at which the most ordinary events unfold — which means you can parachute in on something like Coronation Street (ITV, 7.30 p.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday) every five years and still have a rough idea what is going on. I miss some of the stalwarts, like Martha Longhurst and her milk stouts who died, appropriately, in the snug of the Rover's Return, and there is no one to replace the epic figure of Ena Sharples with her hair-net, pounding the joanna in the Mission. But there are a few who were there when I first became a fan at the age of eight. Bet Lynch is still pulling pints behind the bar of the Rover's, though she is Bet Gilroy the landlady now, with stud earrings instead of the old chandeliers. Priggish Ken Barlow is still having a quick half before going home to do some mark- ing. Emily Bishop is still tugging anxiously at the cuffs of her cardigan, though her old oppo, Mr Swindley (played by the great Arthur Lowe) is long gone.
The sluggish pace of soap is achieved by making everyone behave with incredible obtuseness. Thus when Ted Sullivan, in the current storyline, tells his new wife Rita that he may have a brain tumour, he for- bids her from telling anyone else because he 'can't stand to see sympathy in people's eyes'. The result is that everyone sees Rita looking miserable and blames Ted. Reg the supermarket manager even suggests that Ted may have done in his first wife for the insurance, and is only after Rita for her money. (Rita owns a flat over the corner shop — ample motive for murder in the emotional micro-climate of the Street.) The result of these pointless evasions and endless deferrals is to create a density of texture in which it is possible for viewers to live a proxy emotional life, sometimes for 30 years. Soap operas are aimed pri- marily at women, and their function is chiefly one of reassurance, which is why the strongest characters are always women, who tackle their problems with cups of tea and common sense. The men are neutered tomcats like Alf Roberts and Curly Watts, or worthless flash Harrys like Mike Bald- win. A character like Ken Barlow, the uni- versity boy, is installed as a symbol of upward mobility, but the conservative ethos of the soap dictates that he can never be much more than a pompous prat, whose attempts to 'get above himself as a journal-
ist or businessman invariably end in failure.
The success of cheap 'n' cheerful Aus- tralian soaps like Home and Away (ITV) and Neighbours (BBC), which now regular- ly outstrip the Street in the ratings, seems to have convinced the broadcasters that something more upbeat is required, and the result, of course, is Eldorado (BBC 1, 7 p.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday). Anyone who hasn't been on the moon for the last fortnight will know this is a thrice- weekly show set among British expats in Spain, who live in a specially built £10 mil- lion village, known to the cast as Alberto Plaza. Conceived by Julia Smith and Tony Holland, the show is a shameless rip-off of their EastEnders format, with some skimpy clothes, sunshine and sangria thrown in.
The first three episodes weren't bad, and Polly Perkins's performance as Trish Valentine, the tough but vulnerable owner of the video shop, stood out. But there was nobody to match the early EastEnders stars, Leslie Grantham and Anita Dobson, who had genuine charisma. The setting, with its stuccoed balconies and flattening glare, also lacks the engrossing particularity of Albert Square or Coronation Street. All soaps become formulas if they are to sur- vive, but generally they begin with a certain urgency. Coronation Street took off on the rediscovered virility of the north-west in the 1960s, and EastEnders took on the yup- pie vs underclass theme of the 1980s. Eldo- rado so far seems to be all formula and no theme.
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