A soap opera is a serial on television or radio where each episode links to the next episode. So you're always left at the end of one short episode wondering what's going to happen next. Soap opera is generally about neighbours, friends, family. There may be controversial subjects like drug taking, or violence, divorce. So it would cover all the things that you could imagine possibly happening in people's lives. The term soap opera comes from the 1950s, when radio in America started advertising soap products and they devised little stories to sell these soap products and they called them soap operas. Soap operas are very popular in the UK. If you look at the most popular programmes people watch, the main soap operas on TV are almost always at the top. It's an instant fix of entertainment. People can just sit down on the sofa and enjoy it.