Hi,
As far as I’m concerned both words series & soap opera mean a story about the lives and problems of a group of people which is broadcast every day or several times a week on television or radio. Or is there any difference?
A soap opera is a particular genre of drama serials that usually depicts domestic themes, spiced up by melancholy and sentimentality.
(Film) Series, on the other hand, are the collective term for successive films like James Bond, Star Wars and Harry Potter. They could be of any genres.
A (drama) serial is a long story or drama that is cut into episodes or chapters. Examples are Desperate Housewives, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Ghost Whisperer.
A series is any kind of TV show that comes in weekly or daily installments (usually weekly or daily, anyway). There are comedy series, detective series, romantic series, etc. In some series the same story continues in each installment. However, we also call it a series if each installment is a separate, self-contained story.
A soap opera is a specific type of series. The story continues each day, and in some soap operas the story has continued for nearly a century – since before TV existed, many soap operas that are on TV today began on radio. However, the main thing that makes a series a soap opera is that it is about people’s romantic problems. Somebody’s always got a problem because they’re in love with someone, or not in love with someone, or in love with two people, or because somebody else is in love with someone, or any configuration you can imagine. And the people never deal with their problems in a sensible way, so the problems are always bigger than normal people’s difficulties.
The reason they are called soap operas is that they were originally sponsored mainly by soap companies. In the early days of radio and TV, you didn’t have shows looking for sponsors as much as you had sponsors looking for shows. Often the shows were written and produced by the advertising agencies. Soap companies sponsored these tear-jerking soap operas during the afternoon, because in those days most wives were at home all day, and it was the wife who made the soap buying decisions for the family. I once worked for an advertising agency that wrote some of the first soap operas (long before I was born).
Thank you very much, Danielpeh.
Jamie, thanks for such a great & accurate explanation explanation.