Death rates of characters in soap operas on British television: is a government health warning required?

BMJ 1997;315:1649-1652 (20 December)

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Death rates of characters in soap operas on British television: is a government health warning required?

Tim Crayford, senior clinical fellow,^a Richard Hooper, statistician,^a Sarah Evans, research associate ^a

^a Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, King's College Hospital, London SE5 9RS

Correspondence to: Dr Crayford t.crayford@kcl.ac.uk

Objective: To measure mortality among characters in Britishsoap operas on television.
Design: Cohort analysis of deaths in EastEnders and Coronation Street,supplemented by an analysis of deaths in Brookside and Emmerdale.
Main outcome measures: Standardised mortality ratios and theproportional mortality ratio for deaths attributable to externalcauses (E code of ICD-9 (international classification of diseases,ninth revision).
Results: Staying alive in a television soap opera is not easy.Standardised mortality ratios for characters were among thehighest for any occupation yet described (771 (95% confidenceinterval 415 to1127) for characters in EastEnders), and thiswas not just because all causes of death were overrepresented.Deaths in soap operas were almost three times more likely tobe from violent causes than would be expected from a character'sage and sex. A character in EastEnders was twice as likely asa similar character in Coronation Street to die during an episode.
Conclusions: The most dangerous job in the United Kingdom isnot, as expected, bomb disposal expert, steeplejack, or FormulaOne racing driver but having a role in one of the United Kingdom'smost well known soap operas. This is the first quantitativeestimate of the size of the pinch of salt which should be takenwhen watching soap operas.

Key messages

Characters in soap operas lead very dangerous lives
Their lives are more dangerous even than those of Formula One racing drivers or bomb disposal experts
People suffering from many forms of cancer and other serious diseases have better five year survival rates than do these characters
Could the exaggerated portrayal of these violent and dangerous lives be contributing to our distorted national perceptions about violent crime and death?

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BMJ 2005 331: 1537-1539. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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