What if EastEnders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, and Brookside existed in a shared soap multiverse? Matthew Shadbolt explores the interwoven themes, settings, and story mechanics that unite British soaps, proposing a speculative, unified universe where pubs connect fates, characters cross borders, and Dot Cotton might be the oracle holding it all together. (Read)

Excerpt:
Speculative fiction often asks, "What if?" It toys with connections, intersections, and the hidden narratives lurking beneath the surface of the familiar. While this question is usually reserved for sprawling sci-fi epics or superhero franchises, why not apply it to the deeply ingrained worlds of British soap operas?

What if EastEnders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale Farm, and Brookside, those perennial fixtures of British television, exist not as separate entities but as interconnected threads within a single, shared universe? To dismiss this as idle fancy is to underestimate the narrative coherence and cultural weight these soaps have accrued over decades. They are stories of communities, neighborhoods, villages, streets, and they thrive on conflict, coincidence, and connection. By stepping back, we can begin to see patterns and clues that suggest these fictional locales, Walford, Weatherfield, Emmerdale, and Brookside Close, are part of a vast soap multiverse, united by unseen ties, thematic undercurrents, and a kind of meta-narrative logic.