New families often have a short shelf life in soapland, especially if the producers run out of storylines. But, sometimes it's the ones we love to hate who survive the test

As the Hancocks make their exit from Ramsay Street this week, a new family - the Gordons - prepare to move into Brookside Close. If they're lucky, their residency could last for years. If not, they'll hardly have time to unpack before the producers give them their marching orders.

Life can be hard for a family in Soapland. Just ask the five people who won ITV's Soap Idol competition to be the new family in Emmerdale. A year after joining, they're all out of a job after producers axed their characters before they'd hardly had time to order a pint in the Woolpack.

Having had a clear-out of old characters, Coronation Street is looking to introduce a new family as part of producer Kieran Roberts's plan to boost flagging ratings. They'll be called Harris, but no storylines have been finalised yet.

"We'll probably find some of the actors first, then write the stories afterwards, so that we're basing the characters around the actors a bit more," he says.

Roberts has clearly taken note of EastEnders which, in September 2000, saw the noisy arrival of the Slaters to Albert Square. This must count as one of the most successful family introductions into soap ever.

At first, Charlie Slater and his three daughters, Kat, Lynne, Zoe and Little Mo didn't seem different to any other East End family coming to terms with the loss of a wife and mother.

Gradually, their past has been revealed, giving the Walford saga some of its strongest stories and best ratings in its history. We've seen Kat reveal that Zoe isn't her sister but her daughter (the result of being raped as a child by her uncle), followed by Little Mo bashing wife-beating husband Trevor over the head with an iron.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as the Slater household is concerned. EastEnders' producers have allowed the family skeletons to slowly slide out of the cupboard and gradually infiltrate the Walford soap - a drip, drip, drip process of hints and clues dropped over a period of months until a ratings-winning emotional flare-up.

In part, the success must be due to the way the Slaters were created. Auditions were held for actors without the family tree being set in stone. It was a case of spotting actors they liked and building the characters around them. So the Slaters were tailor-made for the performers, rather than having a plotline imposed on them.

If the Street follows that example, it could be on to a winning format. It's difficult introducing new families into a long-running drama dominated by old faces who've been hanging around Weatherfield for years. Soap fans are always happier and more comfortable with people they know. Sometimes, viewers get it wrong. How we moaned when the Battersbys moved in. This family from hell - layabout Les, loud-mouthed Janice and their daughters - were insufferable, forever shouting and screaming at each other and the neighbours. But we grew, if not to love them, at least to tolerate them and they're now part of the Weatherfield establishment. The new family in Brookside are the Gordons - that's Alan and Debbie plus children Ruth, Kirsty, Ali and Stuart. Sean, Ruth's ex-husband, and Dan, Ruth's childhood sweetheart who's back on the scene, complicate the scenario. The Gordons have not only bought Mick Johnson's old house but also the garage on the parade with Alan's redundancy money from his last employer, who went bust following the foot-and-mouth crisis.

They don't get a very warm welcome from the neighbours after youngest son Stuart throws a party in the house before the rest of the family arrives. Dad isn't too pleased either to find their new home wrecked before they even move in.

The actors must hope for a better reception from Brookside viewers than that given the Musgroves, who took up residence in early 1999 and were evicted, due to popular demand, a year later.

This was the family who looked nothing like each other and all sported different accents. They spent their time shouting (a favourite ploy of soap families with no decent storyline) after son Luke was arrested for Nikki Shadwick's drug rape.

Sometimes, families leave simply because a new producer arrives with the brief to gain publicity and ratings. So, although the Harts were the central family in Channel 5's Family Affairs, they were all disposed of in one go. They were blown up on the pretext that the producers couldn't think of any more storylines for them. Interestingly, there was no great public outcry and Family Affairs goes from strength to strength.

The Hancock family's departure from Neighbours doesn't appear to have been voluntary either. "The producers decided to write the whole family out, which we were all unhappy about," reveals Stephen Hunt, who played Matt.

Occasionally, whole families disappear a few at a time. Like the Di Marcos, late of Albert Square. They arrived in a blaze of publicity - the Italian matriarch, her two hunky sons and sexy daughters. There were also two grandparents although they didn't last long at all before being sent back to Italy.

The rest of the family soldiered on for two years until the axe fell, with all but Beppe quitting Walford for Leicester. Now even Beppe has gone, although you may not have noticed. He was last seen buying bags of crisps in the cafe to keep son Joe amused on the drive to Leicester to see his mother, who'd had a heart attack.

Michael Greco, who played Beppe, was denied a big send-off because he was miffed about being axed and decided to leave before the end of his contract. There was no time to write him an emotion-packed finale.

As they fill up the packing cases and head for Liverpool, the Gordons will be hoping for better luck and a longer life in Brookside.