Soap survivors.

TV In recent years there haven’t been any truly innovative soap formats.

The failure of Night and Day and Family Affairs can probably be traced to the fact that they simply re-iterated the old, worn formats of a central locale and group of families in a contemporary settings. Whilst I wouldn’t for a minute suggest that the space station of Jupiter Moon would be the place to go, the success of Bleak House suggests that the audience is capable of enjoying something “a bit different”.

Perhaps Chris’s post suggests another option – why not rearrange the premise of Survivors into a twice weekly half-hour soap format? A post apocalyptic world has the EastEnders grim factor built in, and there is still the potentiality for the usual comings and goings from the make-shift village, as new survivors are found and the existing characters die of radiation poisoning or starvation. Suddenly the original becomes innovative within a new format, which seems to be how most television works anyway.