More than 15 hours docudramas in Polish TV

The two largest commercial Polish TV stations serve its viewers an uninterrupted marathon of docudrama series. From 7.25 am to 21.30 pm per day. Eleven formats talking about problems of an ordinary people.

Just in the last five years docudramas captured the Polish TV. In 2010 they were maybe two formats, now there are more than ten in only two commercial stations – Polsat and TVN.

Titles of the most popular polish docudramas: From the left, horizontally:School, Get Know your Rights!, The Day that Changed my Life, Sirens, Malanowski & Partners, Why me?, Difficult Issues, Nurses, Betrayals, The Hidden Truth, Jars. 

What is it?

Television as a medium is still evolving. As well as its genres. There are more and more TV "hybrids" and productions which are difficult to assign to a particular genre.

The idea of creating documentary soap (docusoap), a program that combines features of a soap opera and documentary film was born in mid-90s in the United Kingdom.

Everyday stories of ordinary people’s life, aware of presence of cameras has revolutionized the traditional document-oriented observation. They started to show the "truth" that happens in front of the viewer. Presented situations seem to be so real giving an audience an impression that they happened in the past. It blurs the line between a reality and a fiction.

Some examples of docudramas in British TV are: Hotel, Airport, Driving School, Lakesiders, Holiday Reps. 

From docusoap to docudrama

When in 2010 in Poland the first formats began to appear, it was difficult to immediately find a suitable “name”  for this type of production.

On the one hand it could be called a series, because there were made of episodes. On the other hand because of the present of narrator and providing factual information they could be classified as the document.

The best term to describe this type of TV productions is docudrama (or scripted docu). This type of program is based on a combination of documentary techniques and film’s features. Docudrama’s style and form imitates a document but does not represent a real stories and characters. And also is based on the scenario acted out by amateur actors.

Features of docudrama:

All of the above features are used in docudrama to make them similar to documents. However it is also a good way to lower production cost.

Structure

The structure of each episode is always the same – very simple. No matter if you watch betrayel’s story, nurse’s hard work or teenager’s problem. Action of each episode develops with according bellow schedule.

1. presentation of a space (specific village or city)
2. presentation of characters (name, age, social status)
3. formation of action, presenting main problem
4. proper action - running the avalanche of woes
5. happy end

Popularity of docudramas in Polish TV

Docudramas are so popular because:

• an audience was bored watching traditional unreal soap operas where problems seemed to  disappear by a touch of magic wand
• docudramas brought some freshness; same like tabloids which built their popularity scandals and tragedies of ordinary people
• docudramas give an impression of reality and satisfy a need of being an eyewitness of the event, like spying a neighbor through a keyhole
• ordinary characters with usual problems - better identification with  a statistical Pole
• presents of actor amateurs make a story more realistic
• morning coffee, lunchtime or boring afternoon are the best showtimes of docudramas – ideal time for watching mindless TV and someone else's problems
• a simple form of communication, 45 minute episodes, a constant reminder of the story by a narrator - allows to take a nap without losing a thread section
• predictable but exciting action, allows a viewer for active or passive watching

Who are the viewers?

They can be divided into three groups:

You may think that the third group’s opinions will reduce docudramas popularity. However that is not a true. Because people, mainly youth, are very active in the Internet were they react very emotionally to what happen in the media. They comment episodes, subscribe videos, crate fanpages, make parodies of situations and characters, crate memes and remixes.

Second life of docudramas in the Internet

1/ Fanpages

The greatest interest on Facebook have a docudrama Difficult Issues. In addition to the official fanpage founded 7^th of May 2011, there were others where fans were expressing their opinions about this docudrama.

For example: “Iwatched the Difficult issues, so Iknow all about psychology, bitch” or “I watch Difficult Issues just to have a fun of ‘actors’.”

Those fanpages usually do not exist for a long time,  but there are new being created.

2/ Parodies

Internet users trapped characteristics of docudrama very well and quickly began to record their versions or re-issued episode. On YouTube we can find some channels of docudrama parodies for example Sad Issues or Stupid Issues.

3/ Memes

When Polish TV started production  of docudrama the Internet became full of memes, using information ticker – characteristic of docudrama.

Typical information ticker containts: name and age of a character, problem summarized in one sentence.

Because some of presented "problems" were so weird and... stupid information tickers became very popular in the Internet.

Here are some real screenshots from Difficult Issues episodes.

Translation: “She suspects that her sister is allergic to a cat’s hair”

Translation: “She stole photocopy paper from her workplace”

Internet users quickly picked that theme and started to create their own modifications using their photos or photos of famous people and created their "difficult issues".

Translation: “He is run out of a hair gel”

There are many websites called “Image Generators” that allow creating memes.

For example:

Summary

Is it possible to stop an avalanche of docudramas? I don’t thinks so. Polish audience tend to like this type of programs, so producers quickly find out that a docudrama is an easy way to increase viewership. It is relatively easy to produce a new docudrama, as its format remain the same, only theme needs to be changed, there are still some areas of ordinary people’s life that have not yet being captured by docudramas. There are still some difficult issues to be described.  And the Internet waits for them.