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Soap Reruns

cobbles

Banned
Partly bumping this to note that it seems that a couple more episodes (holiday themed ones) of Corrie have been added to Britbox's collection.

Primarily bumping it to express frustration that barely any episodes seem to get updated to that collection. Even if they released one episode a week from the archive starting from the beginning, (or perhaps more usefully, one a day) it would be something more useful to those of us craving access to the early years of the street.
 

Carrie Fairchild

Telly Talk Star
There is an appetite for older B&W programming. There's a British channel called Taking Pictures TV. It started as a niche channel airing predominantly B&W films, newsreels and series and has gained something of a cult following. They've already rerun the ITV daytime soaps Rooms (70's) and Together (80's). The viewing figures for it's top rated programmes average around 100k+, so the likes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale might be out of it's budget right now but they have transitioned to airing better known series over time like Widows, Van Der Valk and Robin's Nest, so as their popularity (and budget) continue to grow, I wonder will better known soaps feature on their lineup.

While this thread is being bumped, I see that Talking Pictures TV started rerunning Together this week, airing daily at 2pm. In addition to that, the full series (bar two lost episodes) has been released as a DVD boxset.

TOGETHER-DVD-01.jpg
 

cobbles

Banned
While this thread is being bumped, I see that Talking Pictures TV started rerunning Together this week, airing daily at 2pm. In addition to that, the full series (bar two lost episodes) has been released as a DVD boxset.

Image clipped for space

Suprised there's that much interest in it to a warrant a DVD release and a rerun, but if there is then why not. Although I guess the model Talking Pictures use means it being one of the more forgotten and one of the shortest running soaps works to their benefit. Apparently they showed in 2016 - it seems they (or more correctly, their parent company) own the vast majority of Southern television archives, which is probably how it ended up with a rerun.

Doesn't really point us to many other classic soap runs given many are owned by Granada/ITV or others. Everyone knows where my interest in this topic lies primarily at this point - and whilst it's good to see some soapy shows getting a rerun there's not much to take optimism, personally - even if there is in general optimism for people who like the show itself.

I note BBC4 have began rerunning 2008 EE during lockdown, noting it here for those who might not have seen that one.
 

cobbles

Banned
This article is from the 31st July but I've just seen it....


More classic Coronation Street will be arriving on Britbox in November to celebrate the shows 60th anniversary, very vague on details of how many episodes or which eras the episodes will focus on?

I'd imagine something similar to the couples collection or holidays collection, but who knows? Will also be documentaries being added to the site....
 

cobbles

Banned
Thought I'd mess about a bit with working out how long it would roughly take to binge most of these shows?

10,266 episodes - Coronation Street - 255,560 minutes - 177 days,
8,987 episodes - Emmerdale Farm - 224,675 minutes - 156 days,
6,632 episodes - EastEnders - 198,960 minutes - 138 days
5,540 episodes - Hollyoaks - 138,500 minutes - 96 days
4,830 episodes - Crossroads - 120,750 minutes - 83 days
3,997 episodes - Doctors - 119,910 minutes - -83 days
2,915 episodes - Brookside - 87,450 minutes - - 60 days

Maybe just maybe it's understandable they aren't rushing to print them to DVD collections. Using Corrie alone as an estimated you'd need 5.1TB or 1085 single layer discs (645 dual layer DVDs) of data to store the episodes in 1080p (of course realistically a lot weren't filmed in that quality).
 
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Biggie

Telly Talk Hero
Thought I'd mess about a bit with working out how long it would roughly take to binge most of these shows?

10,266 episodes - Coronation Street - 255,560 minutes - 177 days,
8,987 episodes - Emmerdale Farm - 224,675 minutes - 156 days,
6,632 episodes - EastEnders - 198,960 minutes - 138 days
5,540 episodes - Hollyoaks - 138,500 minutes - 96 days
4,830 episodes - Crossroads - 120,750 minutes - 83 days
3,997 episodes - Doctors - 119,910 minutes - -83 days
2,915 episodes - Brookside - 87,450 minutes - - 60 days

Maybe just maybe it's understandable they aren't rushing to print them to DVD collections. Using Corrie alone as an estimated you'd need 5.1TB or 1085 single layer discs (645 dual layer DVDs) of data to store the episodes in 1080p (of course realistically a lot weren't filmed in that quality).
Excellent and interesting.

Somehow I am surprised, for want of a better word, that less than 3000 episodes of Brookside have been made.

Brookside was rather enjoyable.
 

Alison Carr

Telly Talk Active Member
Ongoing soaps I don't think would work as a DVD release but those that have ended and are complete could work. Id personally be up for a full release of Eldorado Families, Richmond Hill, Chances and Brookside. I'm currently collecting Sons & Daughters and The Flying Doctors (and later in the year will start on The Young Doctors when that release comes out) but already have the complete series of Dallas, Dynasty, The Colbys, Prisoner CBH, Howards Way, Return to Eden.
 

cobbles

Banned
Ongoing soaps I don't think would work as a DVD release but those that have ended and are complete could work. Id personally be up for a full release of Eldorado Families, Richmond Hill, Chances and Brookside. I'm currently collecting Sons & Daughters and The Flying Doctors (and later in the year will start on The Young Doctors when that release comes out) but already have the complete series of Dallas, Dynasty, The Colbys, Prisoner CBH, Howards Way, Return to Eden.

I don't think most soaps would work as DVD releases to be completely honest - I'd rather see Britbox or some similar service dedicating much more time and effort to obtaining the rights for and putting up for use full catalogues of these shows. Although with the era these shows were in original contracts wouldn't have accounted for streaming, causing all manner of issues - not to mention the licensing of music (I'd much rather see them with the music included than without it).


I don't think any of the ones I listed would work as a physical DVD release you'd be looking more in the direction of Eldorado, Families etc for that. As much as I'd love to see that big Coronation Street boxset delivery...
 
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