Cast out of respectable society, often redheaded, she was the designated truth teller and reality check in countless sudsy dramas.

What at first appears to be a sudsy drama about a suspicious wife's investigation of her husband's possible adultery deepens into a portrait of a woman's instinctive quest for an elusive spiritual and emotional authenticity.

Her demands set in motion a desperate chain of events that transform a sudsy romantic drama set in a Japanese fishing village into a ludicrous action-adventure fantasy set in the United States.

Kevin Lygo, director of television at Channel 4, referred to Holby City as "sudsy drama", deeming it, Casualty and HolbyBlue "all decent programmes, but strikingly similar in many aspects of their tone and construction."

The grandes dames on parade in Franco Zeffirelli's sudsy, picturesque World War II drama, "Tea With Mussolini," include Cher, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Dame Maggie Smith and Lily Tomlin.

So many sudsy made-for-Lifetime dramas about families in crisis flood the market that when a film appears like "A Map of the World," the devastating screen adaptation of a novel by Jane Hamilton, it can be easily overlooked.

On television, he would find the sudsy drama of thwarted love, family insanity, death, destruction and the occasional curse by Satan.

It's high quality soap, and if you like your drama sudsy then you'll like this.

The other persona, which Ms. Midler has described as "a housewife from Queens," is a pop sentimentalist partial to teary-eyed ballads and sudsy dramas like her most successful movie, "Beaches."

Once she arrives, the play becomes a sudsy two-lonely-people drama combined with an elementary discussion about the nature of religious faith.