UK Soaps: Secrets of the Soap Super Brands

At the Edinburgh International Television Festival, a panel was held with the show runners of the big four UK soaps during August 2015. For reference I'm embedding it to my blog.

The show runners were alphabetically listed: Stuart Blackburn, a producer from "Coronation Street",  Bryan Kirkwood, executive producer from "Hollyoaks" and head of continuing drama for Lime Pictures, Daran Little, who currently writes for "Eastenders", Kate Oates, a producer from "Emmerdale", and Dominic Treadwell-Collins, executive producer for "Eastenders". The actors that were invited were Kellie Bright from "Eastenders" and Sally Ann Matthews from "Coronation Street". If you only watch US soaps, you may have heard of Daran Little, as for a time he was employed by "All My Children". This was not discussed during this panel, though his work producing reality series was.

This was a very candid panel and I appreciated that representatives of all four of their soaps appeared. The ratings have gone down, but not to the extent of in the US. Due to when soaps air on UK television, they are in the lead in to prime time series. So if they are doing well it helps their entire network. Stories that didn't work or couldn't be done were even mentioned. If you enjoy soaps, and don't know much about UK shows this will give at least of flavor of what they are doing on the other side of the pond.