The never ending story or Why Dot Cotton is the modern-day Job

Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that soap operas like Eastenders tackle some gritty ethical issues. I'm in no position to speak authoritatively on The Young and the Restless, but in Britain the stuff of soaps touches on very real (if often overblown) issues in daily life. In Eastenders, assisted suicide, paedophilia and a gay muslim sham marriage have been some of the recent storylines. Some may dismiss it as tawdry, sensationalist or immoral, but the inspiration for the writers comes from somewhere very different, according to a former series producer and storyliner.

The Bible!

Jennifer Robbins, speaking at an internal BBC conference, said that the Bible was a common source of ideas for the long-running soap. She likened the garden at the centre of Albert Square, where Eastenders is based, to the garden of Eden, the long-suffering chain-smoking Dot Cotton to Job, and the downfall of Dirty Den to the destruction of Satan.

“EastEnders slays all before it when it is moral to its core,” she insisted. “Like the parables it offers hope and a morality where the good are rewarded and the bad punished either by death, rapid exit or karmically bound forever on a wheel of fire. Despite the twists and turns of the plot lines all our conclusions are essentially moral: good triumphs, evil is punished and the value of human life is asserted,” she said.

Archetypal stories

What she is claiming is should not surprise us. The Bible, of course, does contain a wealth of stories - real human drama where people are tested to their limits - not just physically and emotionally, but spiritually too. And story telling and dramatic enactment are part of the many ways that God has chosen to use in communicating with us.

Some creative writers consider that there are only really seven essential stories. And that when you dig beneath the different characters and settings, one or more of these plot lines will emerge as the backbone of the story that is being told. I am still ploughing through a huge treatise on the subject by Christopher Booker. This enormously enjoyable book - called Seven Basic Plots - makes a good case for this argument. Although these plot lines are mixed together and interwoven, they are easy to spot when you get the knack.

The list is interesting to think about: Overcoming the monster; rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; comedy; tragedy; rebirth. The intriguing thing here is that every one of these basic plots could be seen to be an aspect of the Gospel message.

The truth is that we are wired for stories. We enjoy hearing them, telling them, reading them and watching them unfold on our TV sets and at the movies. When someone says "have you heard about…" we prick up our ears and listen. But why are stories so important to us? And why do we default to these archetypal stories that emerge repeatedly in every culture? Some, like Booker, would read this as an expression of our deepest psychological urges. Others that it is a mechanism developed by evolution to help us adapt to the world and survive.

I have a different thought.

Is our story obsession because, since our expulsion from Albert Square - sorry, Eden - we are all like actors in a drama who have lost the script and forgotten who we really are. Is our love for stories because we lost the true story of our lives when we rebelled against God? Paul hints at an aspect of this when, in Romans 1 he says that the whole of humanity carries with it a suppressed knowledge of the essential truth about God, right and wrong.

We are all, deep down, wired to recognise and rejoice in the Gospel story, but instead we are hiding from it, and hate it. We are built for a relationship with God, and find elements of recognition and satisfaction in the sham substitutes (idols) we turn to instead of the real story, the real God, because they mimic it in some inadequate way. Our fascination with these story lines is because, deep down, we have a “Gospel-story shaped hole” in our lives that we have a desperate need to fill.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that script writers turn to the one true story to find ideas. Because these are the stories that resonate deep down in people’s souls, even if they prefer to embrace twisted versions of them than the liberating truth. Because - unlike Eastenders and many other soaps out there - the dramatic core of the Bible is not about morality, but about a saviour full of truth and grace, who has come to rescue a people for himself for eternity.