The 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster was the previous benchmark for American oil spills, which garnered soap-operatic coverage.

FORBES: The BP Spill: Who's Responsible, Part I

Aaah, this is cricket at its soap-operatic best: two great teams act out the latest installment in a drama that spans generations.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia

So instead she has chosen to recount the soap-operatic lives of the surrealists, of their promiscuous, scandalous, perfidious and self-obsessed goings-on, all in the name of revolution.

ECONOMIST: 20th-century art

With its snappy theme songs, soap-operatic continuities (Laci Peterson, runaway brides, the life and death of Anna Nicole Smith), and a cast of characters ranging from photogenic newsreaders to egomaniacal pundits, contemporary television journalism rivals, in its shallowness and sensationalism, the finest works of the late Aaron Spelling.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Strange Bedfellows'