Reality foam for 'saas-bahu' soaps

TV executives detect trends to copy them. That’s why there is so much imitation

Despite having worked in television for years, I confess I am a sporadic TV watcher. In hotel rooms in unfamiliar cities I prefer to stare out of the window rather than surf the screen looking for an English channel. When in India I have, out of curiosity and professional duty, watched soap operas. In the Mumbai flat in which I am allowed to live, Ganesh, my Nepali Man Friday, watches cricket whenever it’s on and even when it’s not (?).

I am not uninterested, but am easily bored. Having produced, commissioning and written for TV, something I shall continue to do, I take a professional interest in what’s up and what’s down and pride myself in being able, after long experience of doing it for a living in England, having a feel for what works with which audiences.

Normally, TV executives follow statistics and try and detect trends in order to copy them. That’s why there is so much imitation, so many failed attempts at crowd pleasing, so many copy-catted and idiotically adapted formats from the West and no genuine innovation. For that you need either an insightful analytical approach to the relationship between viewers and the idiot box or you need an inspired writer’s reckless instinct about a story or idea whose time has come.

In this context I read in the papers that TV executives in India are rapidly coming to the conclusion that the saas-bahu story is on its way out and the ‘social reform’ soap is in, popular and the new formula to replicate. I bet, all TV channels will sit on the fence and attempt to run both and see which works best. Then one will be axed — prematurely as a rival channel’s attempt to do the same will succeed. Heads will roll. The experiment will cost money.

The British small screen has and has had for umpteen decades, two long-running soaps East Enders on the Beeb and Coronation Street on the Indie channel. These two are prime examples of the opposition between the ‘issues’ formula and the human drama format.

On East Enders the writers and producers flaunt issue after issue: paedophilia, domestic violence, divorce, knifings or shootings in the playground etc. As the serial proceeds week after week and year after year it catalogues the substance of newspaper headlines. When Gary Glitter, pop singer convicted of paedophilia in Vietnam returns to Britain and is given police protection, East Enders will feature an episode in which vigilantes chase the paedophile settler in the neighbourhood and are dissuaded by a righteous citizen who is against taking the law into public hands.

On Corry (Coronation Street) set in Manchester, the characters come and go as in any soap and reflect the community as a whole, but they don’t follow headlines. All human drama can be represented as such: ‘Son, prompted by ghost, suspects mother of murdering dad’; ‘cousins go to war in land and honour dispute’.

Still, Corrie doesn’t do issues that attract the attention of self-styled reformers and NGOS. It may refer to a lover solving his situation by joining the army and being sent to Afghanistan, but that wouldn’t be inspired by the anti-war lobby.

For my money Corrie is better written. Writers who hit on issues have their eye on the intellectual spin of the ball rather than its emotional impact. On that principle I would say that the saas-bahu business isn’t quite finished. It just needs to get real writers who observe life and morals as they are in reality. The Americans invented their own saas-bahu format; remember The Graduate in which Dustin Hoffman is seduced by his girlfriend’s mum?

Now that’s not strictly saas-bahu but it brings in the mother-in-law to be and
ice-hockey to Sarah Palin is still ‘hockey’. So here’s to you Mrs and Miss Robinson….. TV loves you more than you will know…

The writer is a scriptwriter based in London