UK soaps very rarely feature the same characters in two back to back scenes where there has been an apparent lapse of time between them. EastEnders used to do it in the early days. I’ve seen it done a few times on Corrie and Brookside over the years - sometimes as a result of a commercial break cut out of the omnibus, but not always.
We are accustomed to such time lapses on films, dramas and imported soaps, so I’m not sure why it’s deemed such a no-no in our home-grown soaps, which prefer to disguise any time lapse, even by using unnecessary filler scenes. A cross-fade or establishing shot could be just as effective.
Is that not just because there is rarely any need? There are usually multiple story threads running concurrently so switching to another scene feels more natural
I think the style of soaps is to make it feel like real life: I can’t just jump from a pub to the corner shop in a matter of seconds, so by providing a middle scene it gives you a passage of time.
And please Si-Co, let’s leave crossfades in the 80s where they belong.
Watching the repeats on Drama, it seemed to happen all the time in the early years, gave it a bit of a surreal feeling at times. Doesn't happen as much now we've reached 1989, but it does still happen occasionally.
Today's ITV3 episodes are the final ones that were shown by Thames, TVS and TSW. Tomorrow's first episode will be the first shown by Westcountry and Meridian, and the second will be the first shown by Carlton (as it was a Friday, LWT showed the first edition of 1993).
No sound on ITV3HD on Virgin, which has messed up my recordings today. I'm having to catch up on +1, which means I've missed the first 10 minutes of Emmerdale.
Edit: Seems to be some sort of mess up with the audio tracks, digging into the settings, the Dolby Digital track, which the box selects by default, is silent, but changing to the MPEG audio track does have sound. I imagine most Virgin users won't know how to do this though. It resets to the (silent) Dolby track every time I change channel then change back again, or stop a recording and restart it.
Oh man, is Gemma secretly a Dingle? Just kidding there, but that Emmerdale family have a habit of having unusual names, and it turns out Gemma and Paul (in the new Corrie episodes) are really called Gemini and Apollo! Of course they both find those names embarrassing.
Oh man, is Gemma secretly a Dingle? Just kidding there, but that Emmerdale family have a habit of having unusual names, and it turns out Gemma and Paul (in the new Corrie episodes) are really called Gemini and Apollo! Of course they both find those names embarrassing.
Gemma mentioned not long after she joined that her real name was Gemini- but of course back then the writers had not yet invented her twin.
