British Soap Operas
While soap operas were meat and drink to American commercial broadcasters, the situation in Britain was very different. There was only one broadcaster, initially producing programmes for the radio and later the television, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), whose mission, as laid down by John Reith in 1922, was to “inform, educate, and entertain” and very much in that order.
As a consequence, the BBC was a late adopter of the soap opera, its first foray into the genre being Front Line Family, which first aired in April 1941. It featured the trials and tribulations of the Robinsons during the war and its plots ran story lines about rationing, the Blitz, and family members going missing in action. What was unusual about the programme was that it was not available to a British audience, aired initially on the BBC’s North American short wave service and later on its worldwide service.
Its mission was to entertain, as the rather patronizing instructions to the programme’s writers revealed: “this material appeal to an audience of relatively limited mentality, an audience who believes in thrilleresque, is not squeamish, and is almost completely credulous”. However, there was a much more serious reason for airing it, to encourage America to enter the war to assist Britain in its fight against the Nazis. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour proved more effective, though.
Nevertheless, Front Line Family proved wildly popular, being bought under licence by many commercial station in the United States. Eventually, British audiences were finally able to hear what all the fuss was about when it appeared on the Light Programme schedules as The Robinson Family on July 30, 1945. The radio soap had finally reached Britain.
When it was finally taken off the schedules, to protests, in late 1947, it was replaced on January 5, 1948 by Mrs Dale’s Diary, a tale of a suburban doctor and his wife, living at Virginia Lodge in Packwood Hill. Each episode, broadcast every weekday afternoon and then repeated the following morning, began with a short introductory narrative, spoken by Mrs Dale as if she were writing a diary. It ran until April 25,1969, changing its name to The Dales in 1962, and even counted the then Queen Mother amongst its fans. She reportedly said that it was the only way to find out what went on in a middle class family.
The template introduced by Mrs Dale’s Diary and the propaganda mission of Front Line Family were combined to produce what was to become the world’s longest running radio soap, The Archers, first broadcast as a pilot series of five episodes on May 29, 1950 on the BBC Midlands Home Service and then nationally from New Year’s Day 1951. It was used to promote modern farming methods, taking advice from the Ministry of Agriculture, it was for a time 60 per cent entertainment, 30% information, and 10% education. The dramatic episode in which Grace Archer was killed in a fire was even timed to spike the guns of the launch of Britain’s first commercial television station, dominating newspaper coverage the next day.
It was only a matter of time, though, before soap operas gravitated to the increasingly popular medium of television.
