The spectre of Eldorado , the BBC's soap opera set in Spain that ran for just a year in the early 1990s, still looms large over any broadcaster trying to get a new continuing drama off the ground.
But TV3's director of content Jeff Ford is confident that its new soap, to be co-produced by Element Pictures and Company Pictures, will not replicate Eldorado 's trajectory from ill-conceived set-up to premature axing.
Although the setting for the Element-Company soap has not been announced, its “precinct” is likely to be urban, perhaps incorporating both a professional and a geographical community.
Eldorado 's overseas resort location, however, was "not readily relatable to ordinary audiences", Ford says.
It was also an expensive operation to run, making its initial flop with viewers harder for the BBC to swallow.
But what Ford really wants to avoid is a BBC-style snap decision to pull the plug if, for some reason, audiences are slow to succumb. " Eldorado , towards the end, was on its way to being a ratings success," he says.
Soap ratings typically start off high, then plummet, before eventually travelling back up again, as viewers incorporate them into their evening routines.
“The one thing we must be prepared for – everyone, including the media – is that there will be this curve in the figures.”
TV3 is now in an exclusive negotiation period with Element and Company, the British producer of Skins and Shameless , ahead of the 2015 launch of the twice-weekly programme, which will employ 80-120 people and will help the broadcaster to fill holes in its schedule once UTV takes up the exclusive rights to Coronation Street and Emmerdale .
Ford says the soap will have a “distinctive” tone and, above all, will feel contemporary. “We don’t want to look at our soap, like some broadcasters do, from a nostalgic point of view,” he explains.
Certain soaps showcase behaviours and customs that “run a little bit at odds with modern society”, he adds, mentioning no names.
TV3’s effort will be “a bit more edgy”, but it will still retain the narrative conventions of soap.
So, with any luck, that means there will be plenty of love triangles, teenage pregnancies, weddings, get-rich-quick schemes and long-lost relatives to look forward to on our screens.
