British Soaps Full Of The Poor And The Jobless American Shows Are Full Of Fantasy; Brits Tell It Like It Is

“Coronation Street,” one of Britain’s most popular soap operas, begins with an aerial shot of the working-class neighborhood in which it takes place, one much like any other in Manchester. The camera then swoops in on the street, with its row after row of small, dark houses, their laundry hanging out to dry.

It is a far cry, sociologically as well as geographically, from a place like Pine Valley, the ritzy setting for the American soap opera classic “All My Children,” whose residents would probably rather starve than let the neighbors see their laundry.

But the downscale setting is de rigueur for British soap operas, part of a long tradition of socially realistic drama that very much reflects Britain’s often skeptical attitudes (well before Labor recaptured the government with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s election last month) toward money, class and the prospects for social mobility.

British soap operas, which can draw as many as 20 million viewers, more than one-third of the British population, range from the internationally known “Eastenders,” set in a fictional working-class square in the East End of London, to “Emmerdale,” which takes place in a rural village in North Yorkshire. Each soap has its particular sensibility.

“Coronation Street,” for instance, is set around a pub called the Rovers Return and prides itself on stories that are led by characters, not plot lines, while “Brookside,” which takes place in Liverpool, has issue-driven stories concerning bereavement, suicide, battered women, drug abuse and the like.

But whatever their differences, most have one thing in common: They portray the lives of working-class people whose situations in life - allowing for dramatic hyperbole, of course - roughly mirror the situations of many of their viewers.

While the majority of American soaps are fantastical confections, in which the fashionably dressed and the beautifully coiffed lead lives of highly improbable suspense in homes of well-heeled elegance, their British counterparts show characters who are modest in their economic ambitions and all too aware of the limitations imposed on them by Britain’s class structure.

While American shows feature fabulously glamorous business tycoons, brilliant heart surgeons, gorgeous fashion models and rich people who don’t seem to have to actually go to work, British soaps have characters who work in gas stations, fish-and-chips shops and corner grocery stores (and are actually shown working) or who have no jobs and live on the dole.

Along with a healthy complement of classless issues like marriage, death, divorce and infidelity that provide the backbone for soaps around the world, British soap opera characters suffer from problems that are firmly working-class.

Instead of dealing with amnesia, long-lost twin sisters, trans-Atlantic kidnappings, jewel thieves or last-minute murder confessions - common plot devices in American soaps these days - they’re struggling to rear children as single parents, facing unemployment or being threatened with eviction.

When Tiffany, a single mother, is shown these days on “Eastenders,” she’s always shown with her baby, who is sometimes crying - driving home the truth that if you can’t afford child care, you have to look after your children yourself.

Mervyn Watson, deputy controller of drama at Yorkshire Television and the producer of “Emmerdale,”says that unlike Americans, the British don’t want to see aspirational fantasies about the rich and famous. Instead, they want to see shows about people like themselves and the soaps’ producers are giving them what they want.

“It’s interesting that when television has tried to create long-running drama series based on the upper or aristocratic classes, they’ve been the least successful,” said Watson. “Those kind of shows tend to get up people’s noses.”

In their modest way, the soaps can trace their realistic roots as far back as 1956 when John Osborne wrote “Look Back in Anger,” a groundbreaking play that abandoned the mostly middle-class drawing-room dramas of the past to focus on the harsh realities of working-class life. The same themes can be seen, too, in the films of directors like Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and Stephen Frears, who eschew frothy, Hollywood-style films in favor of stark dramas.

“In the end, you are talking about television responding to the culture of the day,” said Jane Harris, the producer of “Eastenders,” which is the most popular of the British soaps. “Unlike North America, which is dominated by Hollywood, British television and its film industry is dominated by public broadcasting, which has a very strong tradition of social realism.”

At the same time, the soap operas speak directly to the British public’s complicated attitudes toward wealth and social mobility. Making a lot of money has always been seen as a goal here - but also, paradoxically, as cause for suspicion and as an almost certain recipe for disaster.

This is a nation, after all, where millions of people buy lottery tickets each week in hope of striking it rich, but tend to revile the people who actually win.

“The English are an envious nation, and in some sense they resent success,” said Peter Ansorge, senior commissioning editor for television drama at Channel Four, whose soaps include “Brookside.” “In America, they love success. If you win something, it’s brilliant and everybody loves it, whereas in England if you win something your colleagues stop speaking to you. If you lose, they say ‘hard luck,’ but secretly they’re happy. This culture of envy argues against soaps set in a cosmetic, nice environment.”

Richard Denny, a British business consultant and the author of several motivational books, said that soap operas reflected Britons’ unfortunate attitude toward ambition.

“America is a nation where everything is possible, where you respect the individual who achieves,” Denny said. “But here we’re wrapped up in history, and historically you made money not by hard work, achievement and endeavor but by inheriting money from your parents.”

In the last few years, there have been tentative signs of Thatcher-style financial mobility in the soaps. On “Coronation Street,” for instance, Kevin Webster has graduated from working as a mechanic to owning his own garage. But he’s still struggling to make ends meet.

When the rich - or richer - are portrayed in soap operas here, they tend to be villains, objects of ridicule or arrivistes trying to, as the British would put it, “rise above their station.”