Irish Soaps

Soaps. Not the kind you use in the shower to keep you from getting stinky... the kind you watch on 'the telly' to keep you entertained. The Irish watch a lot of soaps. To make this entry a little easier to follow I'll give you a bit of a background on Irish television, in general.

There are about 4 to 6 main channels that come with a normal cable hook up. These include RTE 1, 2, 3, and 4 and BBC 1 and 2. RTE 4 is funded to provide programming in Irish (the language) although there are only so many Irish programs out there, so you occassionally find some good shows/movies in English. The remainder of the channels provide fairly typical programming with reality TV, gameshows, news, and SOAPS!

As I said before, the Irish watch A LOT of soaps. 'A LOT' registers in two ways: first there are a lot of different soaps that play on the telly over here. Second there are a lot of people who watch those soaps. Soaps in Ireland aren't just for women... Oh, no. Men of all ages are addicts here. It's no wonder - you'd find updates on all of the soaps in every magazine, paper, tabloid printed over here. The funny thing is, the papers usually spoil the week anyhow so you KNOW what's going to happen.

They also tend to play the soaps over and over again here, so you never really have to worry about missing an episode. Take 'Emmerdale', for instance. (Or Coronation Street or Eastenders... there really much the same no matter which you choose to watch.) It plays at 7pm, but if I miss that I can catch it at 6.30am when I get up in the morning, or in the early afternoon if I have a day off, or if I miss the whole week it's okay. They play every episode back to back during the day on Saturday. It's called the 'Emmerdale Omnibus'.

An interesting thing about Irish soaps - none of them are Irish. They're all British or Australian. For all of the flack the Irish give the British, they're awfully in love with their soaps. Another interesting thing about Irish soaps - the actors and actresses are not all stick thin, perfect models who look like they live in a gym when they're not on camera. (See photos.) They even age on TV. I've always been amused to turn on shows like 'The Young and the Restless' at home and find the same actresses who were on it when I was 5 looking EXACTLY the same as they did when I was 5. Honey, I don't care if you were 20 when I was 5 - there's no way you're still looking that young naturally.

The soaps over here aren't particularly great, but they seem to be so easy to get wrapped up in. Perhaps it's because they're on all the time or perhaps it's because there's really nothing else on. Maybe it's just because the weather often lends itself to curling up on the couch in front of the fire with a cup of hot chocolate and staring at the telly on cold, wet, dark winter evenings. Maybe you should come over and see for yourself! ;-)