Soap operas

I'll admit I went through a soap opera phase.  When I was 17 or so I watched Another World, mostly on Fridays when they had the most dramatic stuff so people would tune in next week.  And later I watched General Hospital for a while.

I used to watch the British soap opera Coronation Street.  The British ones have a somewhat higher standard than their American counterparts.  This show is set in the Lancashire region around Manchester, and the dialogue makes good use of the local dialect. (Some Dutch people have been learning English from watching the show, so they're using expressions like "Flaming Nora!" and "I'll tell you something for nowt!) It's been around since 1961, when it was part of the "kitchen sink" movement of realistic British drama.

I spent a year in Scotland in my late 20s and took to watching a couple of Australian soap operas that they show on British TV.  One was Neighbours, set in a bland Melbourne suburb. (Kylie Minogue and Guy Pearce were on the show then.) The other was Home and Away, with a rural setting.  I read that in suburban England people have taken up Australian slang that they heard on those shows:  stuff like "a blue," which means "a quarrel."