Prime Time Soap

A serialized drama that's like a daytime Soap Opera but shown in the evening.

In the US, prime time soaps tend to have a once-a-week format. Their glory days have passed since Dallas was cancelled. Most prime time soaps since then have been short-lived (such as 2000 Malibu Road and Pasadena) or targeted at teenagers. My Network TV, in its first year, attempted to give the genre a comeback by infusing it with a daytime soap-esque play schedule (a new ep every night of the week). It went over about as well as one would expect — all of the shows were US remakes of Latin American telenovelas, which meant that their target audience was more inclined to watch new shows en español.

In the U.K. and Australia, Prime Time Soaps are a lot less glitzy than in the U.S., and tend to form an important part of the prime time schedule, with the likes of Eastenders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale being the most popular shows in the country (until the likes of Britain's Got Talent and The Voice came along, but that's another story).

Tropes used in Prime Time Soap include:

• Beverly Hills, 90210
• Central Park West
• Coronation Street
• Dallas
• Dawson's Creek
• Desperate Housewives
• Dirty Sexy Money
• Dynasty
• Eastenders
• Emmerdale
• Falcon Crest
• Home and Away
• Girls
• Gossip Girl
• Knots Landing
• Melrose Place
• Neighbours
• The OC
• One Tree Hill
• Revenge
• Shortland Street
• Sex and the City
• Tinsel
• Generations
• Twin Peaks