Soap opera
From TeeVeePedia, the Internet TV Encyclopedia.
Soap operas are melodramatic, long-running shows which tend to feature a lot of sex, violence, ridiculous plot twists, hammy acting, and other things which make them either unwatchable or guilty pleasure, depending on what mood you're in. There are two kinds of soaps: daytime soaps, which are done on the cheap and air 5 days a week for years (sometimes decades), and nighttime soaps, which run once a week and have somewhat bigger budgets but are still over-the-top.
Soap operas got their name because in the early days of television, they were televised operas which functioned as commercials for soap.
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