To not understand why people watch soaps on Christmas Day

[alfabetty]

Why? They are pretty mindless entertainment at the best of times, but why interrupt your family day together to watch TV? Let alone the diet of misery and unpleasant behaviour the Christmas specials seem to consist of.

I just don't get it.

I wouldn't mind the xmas day specials if the writers/producers/schedulers didn't decide on purpose to make the xmas day episodes purposefully miserable.

I stopped watching EE after the Jamie dying on xmas day episode. I don't want that on xmas day, I want light hearted nonsense. And this years corrie run up with lots of death and doom and the EE storyline is just so bloody grim, and it's grimness for the sake of it to pull in ratings and shock.

Of course I bloody loved the Den/Angie xmas divorce back in the day - soaps aint what they used to be .

Huge veiwing figures will tell you it it is what people want to watch. The millions who tune in are making an active choice when there is so much else that they could watch or do especially on Christmas Day.

Hec, Southeast & her MiL - that is really my point. People interrupt their (happy?) day with family, to watch misery. And the press all go along with this although it's a normal thing to do on Christmas Day.

because i don't have to watch it on boxing day as she's gone home!

i think the viewing public are generally easily pleased these days though.

If that Eastenders cot death storyline has provoked this thread then YANBU.

My good friend is watching her father deteriorate in hospital and he will die any day now. It's heartbreaking.

The idea of watching some morbid, hideous storyline that revels in the grief of losing a family member at christmas just turns my stomach, it really does.

Happy day?

If we,and many families,I suspect,didn't have something to watch on Christmas day,at least one person would be lying on the floor in a pool of blood,having been bludgeoned to death with a turkey drumstick.

Mouldycheese, yes, it is that that prompted me to post. It seems to have gone beyond all decency. But still the press trail it as a highlight of Christmas Day. I honestly can't think of anything more awful - what on earth will they offer up next year?

I don't have a TV so I can't understand why people are so fascinated by watching fictional people watching fictional lives - then moan that they have no time to do anything.

I know people that constantly complain they never have time to anything but sit down and watch TV for 3+ hours per day. extraordinary

yes. It seems that people don't like to watch happiness. I don't know why that is.

If it is, as suggested up the thread, that people have such miserable lives that the only thing that makes them happy is to watch a fiction where the people are having a truly terrible time, then I think that's really sad.

But then, you see it on the news too. Only terrible things are news. There's lots of good things in the world but people want the death and destruction.

and the royal wedding and footballers, of course.

I dunno. I understand that people are given what they want.

I just wish that wasn't what they wanted.

Remember a few years back they put titantic on bbc1 on Xmas day?! Fgs , and then it was Eastendees
I bet more people slit there wrists that Xmas thanusual

I don't watch soaps any more (no time ) but when I did, I have to admit always looking forward to the christmas day ones

Mum always watched them too- it was something we actually had in common!

I suspect the reason my MIL doesn't come to visit us at Christmas, despite repeated invites, is that she really wants to watch all the soaps/ reality TV and doesn't get a chance in our house!

they start at 6 with hour long emmerdale, coronation st, then eastenders jooly

then you can cheer yourself up with a live birth show then carrie

cable isn't much better

I think the cot death storyline is on NYE, its the whole Stacy/Ryan/Janine thing at xmas, I dont see anything wrong in watching telly at xmas, by that time we're all pissed tired to do much else!

BTW I have also stopped watching EE because of the upcoming storyline re cot death, not because they are covering cot death but because of the storyline afterwards.

I don't watch any soaps, but my mum does.

They came to us for a month, over Xmas, when we lived in Cyprus.

We didn't have satellite, only BFBS, which on Xmas day was wall to wall soaps (they buy them after shown in UK). I'm not joking, 1400 to 2100, all the soaps. My mother had to watch them all, every one.

By 1800 I was suicidal, by 2100 in bed. Next day she moaned at me for going to bed early and 'spoiling a family day'

Good grief

You obviously don't dfollow a soap, betty

I don't have a miserable life. I enjoy watching Eastenders, but find it difficult to explain why. I guess I have watched it for so long that I have an interest in the characters. Controversial as the storyline is, I am keen to find out how it is portrayed.

I'm actually a bit like that old granpa in "The Lost Boys"- I read about them in the TV guide, but don't watch! As he says "You buy the TV guide, you don't need a TV!"

PLUS, I think there is quite an obvious reason for watching EE's RYAN, Janine, Stacey storyline

Emmerdale is on at the same time as Dr who dilemma

Because after a whole day running around making the day fabulous for DS he will be tired and be in bed and I will get some me time - which includes watching Eastenders.

Do you need to understand?

I don't watch soaps but Christmas day is about enjoying yourself, if that includes watching soads then...so what?

YABU unless rest of family want to watch several hours of omnibus editions and there is only one reception room.