Thought soap operas were dead? They’ve found a surprising new home

Soap operas, once the bread and butter of daytime television, have been in dire straits. Neighbours was cancelled after a 37-year run, only to be rebooted last year to disappointing ratings. All My Children was cancelled after 43 seasons, and Days of Our Lives lost its regular free-to-air slot. But just as soaps appear to be fading, they have found a new home in an unexpected place: TikTok.

TikTok soaps, such as The Security Guard is a Trillionaire and Mr Williams! Madame is Dying (which has collected as many as 3.2 million views for single videos), are generally the length of a feature film, but are cut into strings of one- to two-minute episodes, a length optimised for TikTok.

Neighbours may be shedding viewers, but TikTok soaps are attracting millions. What’s behind this surprising shift? Credit: Compiled by Jamie Brown.

Globally, the “short drama” hashtag has over 5 billion views. In Australia alone, #DramaTikTok and #DramaTok videos have amassed more than 300 million views over the past three years, equivalent to over 270,000 views daily. Specific series, such as the LGBTQ soapie Hidden Canyons, are collecting millions of likes, while others such as Adored by the CEO are being translated into different languages on the platform to expand their reach.

So, amid such a struggle on television, why are soap operas finding success on TikTok?

Put simply, traditional soaps are generally too long and structured for the social media age, says Suzie Shaw, the chief executive of creative agency We Are Social. “We’re being conditioned for shorter, sharper storytelling. We want storylines to move quickly, we want more reveals. TikTok gives us that.”

According to a recent Queensland University of Technology report, Australia’s biggest soaps, Neighbours and Home and Away, have lost about half their local viewers over the past 20 years. The premiere of the rebooted Neighbours only claimed about 122,000 viewers across the five metro areas last year, a significant decline since its heyday (the show typically drew about 300,000 viewers per episode before 2016).

Older generations who grew up with Neighbours are gradually being replaced by younger generations who prefer immersive content, says Tom van Laer, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Sydney. “TikTok [soaps] align with the participatory culture prevalent among younger people, allowing audiences to interact with creators and influence ongoing narratives.”

Upon first glance, TikTok doesn’t seem like an obvious home for soaps. The platform is largely driven by authenticity, whereas soaps like My Husband is a Big Shot are all about exaggerated melodrama (think deceit, foul play, fake slaps). However, Shaw says this melodrama is steeped in irony, another trademark of TikTok content.

“The melodrama also clearly distinguishes it from real life,” Shaw says. “That kind of drama tends to do well on the platform, especially the cliffhanger storylines. It’s similar to #StoryTime videos, which people find really compelling.”

Shifting from free-to-air to TikTok may seem extreme, but Radha O’Meara, a University of Melbourne senior lecturer who has researched soap operas, says soaps have always been a key site of media change.

“It was common in the 1950s for American soap operas to be performed and transmitted live-to-air, but this gradually evolved into pre-recorded and pre-edited episodes,” O’Meara says. “In Australia, soaps like Home and Away were leaders in television drama shifting from analogue videotape to high-definition digital video.”

Within this history of dynamism and innovation, O’Meara says soaps’ adaptation to TikTok is unsurprising. “Soaps are still relatively short snippets of stories designed to be consumed in parts. They continue a tradition of serial storytelling, from Charles Dickens to TikTok.”

It’s not just appealing to the viewers. Jennifer Kang, a South Korean web series expert at Queensland University of Technology, says short-form soaps are cheaper and quicker to produce.

This medium has particularly appealed to China, where streaming companies dedicated to short-drama production have been established, including FlexTV and ReelShort. These companies create soaps over just a few weeks, and then promote them on TikTok by uploading a portion of the episodes.

“You don’t need long filming schedules or extensive time spent in post-production,” Kang says. “High-tech filming equipment is not always required because audiences will watch it on their smartphones. They don’t often feature famous cast, which also reduces production costs.”

As a result, most TikTok soaps appear less slick than something like Neighbours, but Shaw says this merely adds to their appeal. “Younger generations have seen so much done with technology, so these videos are like a refresher. It’s novel that they’re not glossy. They’re surprising and original, which often triggers dopamine in a way linear, traditional soaps can’t.”

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