SOAPS.

[Gal]

The new producer has made a big difference to Coronation Street. There is some very fine acting in the current story lines.
Maybe the Hayley storyline has helped some people who have similar to cope with. I haven't found it negative at all.
I have lost two close friends to cancer in recent years, plus my own mother when I was young. I have found the Hayley story line very moving and it has in a way helped me to understand better what they all went through.

I only watch Coronation Street, but I agree with this Rodo - every time I watch Hayley and Roy I get a huge lump in my throat, because they have acted so well all along that to me they are a real couple and are really going through this awful time. I think Hayley has been enormously positive throughout, until last night when she got the news that the treatment wasn't working....very out of character for her but understandably, she lost it. It was a very sad scene, but not IMO over acted in the slightest.

Cannot comment on other soaps as I don't watch any others.

[Kaz]

I only watch Corrie and Emmerdale, but agree that the Hayley storyline has been well done. If anything I think they have been rather more positive then the reality with her symptoms etc, not negative at all It has been, and continues to be, very touching.

[Cal]

I have to disagree. I am an avid Coronation Street viewer as it was the last memory I have of my Mother who did so love it, she died at 49 not long after Corrie started. Over the years I have continued to watch Corrie as the only soap we watch. Now having had cancer twice I cannot bear to watch, it does not help me, it just fills me with depression. I won't watch again until this awful storyline is over. There is no need for storylines like this, enough people have to suffer cancer in real life, they don't need it dressed up as entertainment.

[Rodo]

It isn't intended to be entertainment. It is a depiction - very different. The producer said in today's paper that she was moved to tears over Hayley's acting in the final scenes. I really do feel that it makes us realise to a greater extent the real angst for the patient and also for their loved ones. In a way I don't want to watch because it makes me so sad, yet I just have to.

[Cal]

You would think they would want more viewers instead of less, but having spoken to others who have endured cancer like me I can say they are with one accord in agreement with me. And its news to me that Soaps are not meant to entertain viewers - I would have thought that was the main reason for having them!

[Kaz]

I didn't mean to upset anyone I've had a lot of cancer in my family too, including my dear dad who died from lung cancer in 2011, but I don't find watching soap stories about cancer upsetting at all, I accept they are fiction

I expect we are all different xxxxxxx

[Cal]

But it is very different Kaz, nursing or knowing someone with cancer as opposed to having it yourself, and spending many many visits to hospital to have scans, and then hear the results and then have operations and treatment, and then back again to see if its worked. And then spending years going for checkups. It is I can assure you very different - and I did lose my Mother to cancer.

[Diflower]

I don't watch any of the soaps, haven't for years. So I only vaguely know the storyline from seeing the brief outline in the Tv schedule, am aware Hayley is dying from cancer but no details, so am not commenting directly on that.

But yes Cal, however much we 'think' we know - and blimey, my mum had cancer for 12 years, terminal for 7-8 years so I did think I knew - it is a completely different experience when you're the person who has it.
It's also completely different if you're one of the ones who has it, are a low risk for recurrence and need minimal treatment. Very different again for those who are diagnosed, told nothing can be done and sadly die within weeks/months.
Different too for those who have it return and go through the whole thing all over again - and there are many more variations.
In other words, there are many different levels of experience of it.

I'm quite sure that for anyone going through it now, watching someone die from it is not what they would want to see.
For some who have had it and are now well, it may be watchable, and those around them would probably be grateful for a different outcome.
And if it does help those who have not had it themselves understand even a little of what it's like, then maybe it's a good thing.

[Kaz]

It is obviously a very emotive subject - sorry if I upset anyone with my viewpoint xx

[miasmum]

Kaz I don't for one minute think you upset anyone xxx