New English Words: docusoap

I was watching a docusoap on the television the other day. "A what?", you might say. A docu-soap. Well, it’s another one of these blend-words, where two words have come together to make a third word. In this particular case, I’m talking about a TV genre, which mixes a documentary programme and a soap opera.

Now documentary programmes we all know, and these are particular fly-on-the wall documentaries we’re talking about now, where people are carrying on their everyday lives, doing their ordinary things and yet being televised or radio-recorded at the same time. But why soap? Why are these things called soap operas? Well that goes back to the 1930s and it was probably because some of the early sponsors of radio programmes at the time and television programmes were soap manufacturers, and so the idea came that a soap was one of these everyday, you know, washing machine kind of dramas.

docusoap

televizní program (něco mezi dokumentem a soap operou (kamera nezúčastněně sleduje každodenní život skutečné rodiny, skupiny studentů a nebo třeba osudy doktorů a pacientů v nemocnici. Příběhy nepíší scénáristé, postavy neztvárňují herci, ale přesto se o jakýsi příběh ze života jedná.)

soap opera
(washing machine kind of dramas)

seriál ze života s obyčejnými hrdiny

fly-on-the wall

moucha na zdi

to be televised

natočit televizní kamerou

that goes back to

datuje se od…