The
British television schedules are awash with soap operas,
a deluge that, like a tropical storm off the coast of Florida,
shows no signs of abating. And the British public are addicted;
we can’t get enough of them. Thousands of tabloid column
inches every week are devoted to the stars, the scandals, the
plot line spoilers.
Many
dismiss these programs as simply low-end, mass-market entertainment,
an over-the-top brew of sexual intrigue, heightened emotions
and dodgy dealings. That may be true, but they also reflect
the society we live in, even if they do so in an exaggerated
fashion, and they have the power to educate as well as entertain.
From the 1980s onwards, British soap opera writers have tackled
tough subjects, including substance abuse, teenage pregnancy,
domestic violence, and incest. Lesbians, too, have begun to
crop up on British soaps in recent decades, with mixed results.
Coronation
Street is the longest running
soap in the U.K., having started in the 1960s. It has lost much
of the gritty realism it once had; although it still tackles
some thorny issues (underage sex is a popular topic) and is
the first and only British soap to have a regular (and extremely
likable) transgender character, on the whole Coronation
Street now gives the impression of a well-worn and comfortable
pair of slippers.
It
wasn’t until this year that they introduced a gay man,
and this is a drama set in Manchester, the center of the English
gay universe. Still no sign of a lesbian, even after 44 years.
The
1980s brought us two new, cutting-edge soap
operas: Brookside, on the newly-created Channel 4,
and EastEnders. Brookside was a slice of Liverpool
life under Thatcher, highlighting the high unemployment rates,
petty crime and family tensions; it was to the 1980s what Coronation
Street was to the 60s. Meanwhile
over on the BBC, they were looking to create something as hard-hitting
as Brookside, and launched EastEnders in 1985—also
a slice of London life under Thatcher, with high unemployment,
petty crime and family tensions.
Brookside
and EastEnders were praised for being realistic, and
criticised for being depressing. But
where did they stand on lesbians?
EastEnders
has a decent enough track record on homosexuality,
but they have concentrated on the boys (they caused a sensation
by screening the first kiss between two men back in 1989). For
around six months in 1994 there was an unremarkable lesbian
couple in Albert Square, Della (Michelle Joseph) and Binnie
(Sophie Langham), who scored points for being a mixed-race couple
and for moving away together to Ibiza rather than being forced
to split up, but they quickly became a dim memory.
There
has been nothing since then, unless you count the completely
gratuitous ratings-stunt kiss between Zoë Slater (Michelle
Ryan) and her friend Kelly (Brooke Kinsella) in 2003. The writers
bottled out and the two young women dismissed it as a one-off,
assuring each other that neither of them was “like that,”
leaving lesbian and bisexual viewers feeling cheated. This was
a wasted opportunity, a chance to explore an emotionally complex
situation between best friends that became just another exploitive
TV moment instead.
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