A Typical EastEnders Christmas
It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s the perfect time to snuggle up by the fire and watch some feel good TV. So why is that come the season to be jolly, the soaps like to get all depressing on us?
While the world of British soaps isn’t a cheery on to start with (nearly as many murders, affairs and backstabbing happens on Albert Square as it does on Breaking Bad), they all reserve their darkest and most devastating stories for the festive period.
Be it Den and Angie’s divorce or Pauline Fowler’s death in Eastenders or Cilla blowing up the chip shop on Coronation Street, over the years the soaps have enjoyed exploring the darkest sides of life while the rest of us are happily sitting in paper hats and dodgy jumpers enjoying a bellyful of turkey.
It’s that split between the happiness of the season and the shady events that makes the temptation for dark and seedy storylines just too much for the writers to resist.
It lets them build up tension and suspense, knowing that come the perfect moment, when the rest of the world is merry, they can drop their biggest bombshells.
With the ratings at their highest over the holiday period, the soaps need to bring their A-game. Nothing brings in the viewers more than high drama, and nothing cranks up the drama like a good crisis.
Like the dramatic finale to a TV drama, the soaps focus all their biggest and grandest efforts at the holidays, knowing that not only are they guaranteed a killer timeslot on the biggest TV day of the year, but that that they have a massive battle to win as well.
All the soaps try their hardest to win the eyeballs of those sat at home, so of course that leads to each of the big soaps constantly trying to one-up each other come the biggest day of all.
With the Christmas battle set to commence once again, get ready for more dark tidings from Albert Square and Coronation Street.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in Coronation Street Christmas Eastenders Emmerdale TV