ABSTRACT
The appeal of the soap opera to television programmers and producers lay in it being relatively inexpensive to produce, and its potential to structure a daily habit of television viewing. But its preoccupation with family affairs and emotional matters, and its early popularity with a predominantly female mass audience, brought hostile criticism from many commentators. Australian soaps, however, have flirted with elements of the fantastic, both in terms of dream sequences and flashbacks, and in the use of comedy: special theme Christmas episodes, for example, allowing the cast to operate momentarily outside the conventions of naturalistic drama. In terms of genre mixing, a discourse of comedic sentimentality often seems to threaten the Australian soap, with shows from A Country Practice to Neighbours allowing animals of all kinds, both native and domestic, to play a starring role. While the British soaps will make room for some similar comic stereotypes, in the American soaps such comedy is rare.
