Feature

Why do people want soap spoilers?

Ed Williamson

4th December 2013

If I told you what was going to happen in the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead, you'd batter me about the head and neck, and quite rightly. But listen: Carol Jackson in Eastenders is going to get breast cancer. If you watch Eastenders then you already know this, because the producers want you to, and deliberately announced it to the press. So why do we want spoilers for soaps, but not for anything else?

Until about seven years ago I was a regular viewer of Eastenders. Then I got a job that meant I was never home to see it, and when I eventually came back to the Square I found I didn't know who anyone was. So I slunk off and did something more useful with my evenings. I think. I might have just watched other stuff instead.

Then last month I decided to watch an episode. I wanted to get to know the characters in advance of Danny Dyer's debut so I could hit the ground running. I mean, obviously I'm going to start watching every episode as soon as he turns up, and I presume you are too.

What I found was a guy called Michael Moon, played by Jo from This Life, having dinner with Janine, whom he seemed to hate. Then he screamed into a cushion. I googled to find out what the fuck was going on, and was told by a string of results that the character was shortly about to die.

Michael Moon, seen here on his way to a Kraftwerk-themed fancy dress party.


But aren't spoilers like this anathema to the TV viewer? There exists a fairly well-observed omertà on social media when it comes to the big shows: aware of an international audience, the official Twitter accounts generally shy away from overt discussion of what happened in the most recent episodes not yet aired in other countries. Owners of loose lips come in for a pummelling; just look at the flak Metro took for spoiling Game of Thrones earlier this year. And occasionally they forget or just ignore it in favour of domestic promotion: see this post on the Boardwalk Empire Facebook page, or rather don't if you don't want the season four finale ruined like it was for me.

Soaps exist in a different sphere: they have to draw viewers in every night and keep numbers up. They also don't get reviewed all that much in the traditional sense: almost all their press and online coverage comes before the episode, not after it. So a structure exists, in TV guide magazines and websites, for the show to reveal spoilers in advance. I understand totally the motivation for an article like this one on Digital Spy: it narrates a scene from an upcoming Eastenders episode, then invites the reader to speculate on what's going to happen next. Viewers' interest piqued; website gets hits. But I don't understand at all why a viewer would want to know that a principal character is about to be killed off.

I'd completely forgotten that Janine pushed Barry down a hill and then watched him die. That was mental, right?


And yet I don't remember being bothered by it when I was a regular Eastenders viewer. There wasn't the same infrastructure that exists now to talk about TV on the internet, but certainly I'd see the big plotlines announced way in advance on the cover of TV Quick. As far as I can recall, it made me want to watch the episode - and, crucially, all the episodes leading up to the episode, so I didn't miss anything key - rather than switch it off because I knew what was coming.

Why? Two explanations are possible. Maybe overexposure to 'quality' serial drama and its OMG moments means that I now place too much importance on surprises, or maybe those surprises are just less significant for soap viewers. Since the first premise makes the crazy assumption that I'm somehow at fault, let's focus on the second.

Soaps are intended to mirror, or rather run parallel to, real life. This is not so much meant in terms of the storylines - most people don't buy and sell the same pub three times a year, get addicted to crack and sleep with their brother's wife - but more of their being a constant, relentless counterpoint to the viewer's own existence. Characters come and go, then come again and go again. Your own life rattles on, while you peek over the fence at a second one in the soap. There's no emphasis on the show having a specific dramatic flashpoint or endpoint; they're all just peaks and troughs, more of which will come along in a couple of months. Surprises, then, are less of a big deal, because there's less riding on them.

Soaps aren't a lesser form of drama; just one with a different stress on it. I've seen some fantastic acting in soaps over the years - the Jordache family in Brookside; the effortless comedic touches of Coronation Street's Duckworths - and one thing's for sure: with Danny Dyer on his way to Albert Square, the standard's only going to increase. Just don't spoil it for me.

More:  Eastenders
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