The soap opera genre originated in American radio serials of the 1930s, and owes the name to the sponsorship of some of these programmes by major soap powder companies. Modern, television soap operas are long-running "serials" concerned with everyday life (not to be confused with "series").
There is no single "hero" in soap operas and the wide range of characters in "soaps" offers viewers a great deal of choice regarding those with which they might identify. The question guiding a soap story is not 'What will happen next?' but 'What kind of person is this?' (Geraghty 1991, p. 46), therefore soaps are regarded, as particularly open to individual interpretations.
The soap opera "reality" is constructed in such a way, as to be completely parallel to what is happening in the world outside the TV screen. For instance, if it is Easter in the UK, you"ll find that it is also Easter in Coronation Street. Some Polish TV viewers will probably watch the Christmas episode of Klan, where the Lubicz family shares the wafer, and only then proceed to do the same with their own families.
Serials are potentially endless. They may continue for many years (e.g. Coronation Street has been on the air for 44 years now). The passage of time appears to reflect "real time" for the viewers: in long-running soaps the characters age as the viewers do. .
Let us, perhaps, take a closer look at the instances of the soap opera genre mentioned in the title. Coronation Street is a Granada production which is broadcast nationally in the UK. First shown in 1960, it is the longest-running British TV soap opera, watched by about one-third of the British population, especially by people from lower socio-economic groups (Livingstone 1990, p. 55). It offers a "nostalgic perspective on northern industrial working-class life as group-centred, matriarchal, commonsensical and blunt, but also warm-hearted" (Chandler 1994). .
The "local community" is the main theme in Coronation Street.