thumb|upright=1.2|Publicity photo of married couple Nick Davis ([[Larry Keith) and Anne Tyler Davis Martin (Joanna Miles) in the American soap opera All My Children (1970)]]
A soap opera (also called a daytime drama or soap) is a genre of a long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term soap opera originated from radio dramas' original sponsorship by soap manufacturers. The term was preceded by horse opera, a derogatory term for low-budget Westerns. Some authorities exclude short-running serial dramas from their definition. The longest-running television soap opera is Coronation Street, which was first broadcast on ITV in 1960.
According to Albert Moran, one of the defining features that make a television program a soap opera is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode". In 2012, Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Lloyd wrote of daily dramas:
Soap opera storylines run concurrently, intersect and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several concurrent narrative threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another or may run entirely independently of each other. Episodes may feature some of the show's storylines, but not always all of them. Especially in daytime serials and those that are broadcast each weekday, there is some rotation of both storyline and actors, so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas seldom conclude all their storylines at the same time. When one story thread ends, there are several others at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes typically end on some sort of cliffhanger, as does the season finale (if a soap incorporates a break between seasons), the tension only to be resolved when the show returns for the start of a new yearly broadcast.
Evening soap operas and those that air at a rate of one episode per week are more likely to feature the entire cast in each episode and present all storylines. Evening soap operas and serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end-of-season cliffhanger.
In 1976, Time magazine described American daytime television as "TV's richest market", noting the loyalty of the soap opera fan base and the expansion of several half-hour series into hour-long broadcasts to maximise advertising revenues. At that time, many prime time series lost money, while daytime serials earned profits several times more than their production costs. The issue's cover notably featured its first daytime soap stars, Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes of Days of Our Lives, a married couple whose onscreen and real-life romance was widely covered by both the soap opera magazines and the mainstream press at large.
Origin and history of the genre
The first program generally considered to be a "soap opera" or daytime serial by scholars of the genre is Painted Dreams, written by and starring Irna Phillips, which premiered on WGN radio Chicago, on October 20, 1930. Although it did not make the move until February 15, 1932, Clara, Lu 'n Em would become the first network serial of the type to move to a weekday daily timeslot; as such, it also became the first network daytime serial. Fitting in with these characteristics, most soap operas follow the lives of a group of characters who live or work in a particular place, or focus on a large extended family. The storylines follow the day-to-day activities and personal relationships of these characters. "Soap narratives, like those of film melodramas, are marked by what Steve Neale has described as 'chance happenings, coincidences, missed meetings, sudden conversions, last-minute rescues and revelations, deus ex machina endings. These elements may be found across the gamut of soap operas, from EastEnders to Dallas.
In many soap operas, in particular daytime serials in the United States, the characters are frequently attractive, seductive, glamorous and wealthy. Soap operas from the United Kingdom and Australia tend to focus on more everyday characters and situations and are frequently set in working-class environments. Many of the soaps produced in those two countries explore social realist storylines such as family discord, marriage breakdown or financial problems. Both British and Australian soap operas feature comedic elements, often affectionate comic stereotypes such as the gossip or the grumpy old man, presented as a comic foil to the emotional turmoil that surrounds them. This diverges from American soap operas where such comedy is rare. British soap operas also frequently foreground their geographic location as a key defining feature of the show while depicting and capitalising on the exotic appeal of the stereotypes connected to the location. As examples, EastEnders focuses on the tough and grim life in the East End of London; Coronation Street and its characters exhibit the stereotypical characteristic of "northern straight talking".