The Living Soap was a BBC North fly on the wall reality television show broadcast in 1993, which set out to show the everyday lives of six students sharing a house in Manchester. The six chosen students give up their privacy for one year in return for free rent and of course, the chance to be on television. Out of the original six participants, four of them left the show and were replaced by other willing students. Although the show was groundbreaking, The Living Soap attracted the wrong kind of controversy and was taken off the air after about five months. The remaining housemates appeared in two one-hour specials later on in 1994. For the album by AC/DC, see Fly on the Wall Fly on the wall is a style of documentary-making used in film and television. ... Reality television is a genre of television programming which presents unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and features ordinary people over professional actors. ... Manchester is a city in the United Kingdom, famous for being the worlds first industrial city and considered by many to be UKs second city [1][2]. It is a centre of the arts, the media and big business. ...

The Living Soap differs from most of today's reality shows because, to achieve the sense of currency suggested by the show's name, each episode was aired as soon as it was made. Therefore, the depiction of everyday life was inevitably distorted from episode two onwards by the fact that the subjects were on television every week (students outside the program criticized it for being completely untrue compared to real life as a student). In this respect, The Living Soap can be contrasted with Sylvania Waters, an earlier Australian documentary based on a similar concept, which was filmed in its entirety before a single episode was broadcast. Sylvania Waters was an Australian reality television series which followed the lives of an Australian family. ...

Here is a list of the original participants: Simon - football mad Everton FC fan, Dan - clay-shooting Tory, Matt - long haired heavy metal fan, Emma - cool single mother, Spider - clubber with infectious laugh, Karen - art student. Everton F.C. is an English football club from the city of Liverpool and was founded in 1878. ...

The program’s subjects complained bitterly about the way they were portrayed due to the editing carried out by the show’s producers and directors, which included Spencer Campbell. Within months of the show starting Dan, Matt, Simon, and Karen all left of their own accord to be replace by Colin, Mark, Nadia, and another one. Considering that the show was so bad, it is ironic that the participants must be grateful of this fact because the program was never shown again.

Some links, they include ex-members' sites and reviews etc

http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/reviews/1999/livingsoap.htm http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/bbcnorthwest/bbcnorthwestprogs.html http://tv.cream.org/extras/timecapsule/index.html#livingsoap http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onelife/sundaysurgery/dj_biogs/biog_mark.shtml http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/programme/NMYF199T (lots of information here if you can navigate round it!!) http://www.rothbart.co.uk/ http://www.handymanhome.co.uk/media/holidaysathome/colin-rothbart/index.htm