Serialised drama follows small senior citizen in period after surgery (4,5)
I believe the answer is:
soap opera
'surgery' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I cannot see how they can define each other.
'serialised drama follows small senior citizen in period' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'drama' could be 'opera' (I've seen this before) and 'opera' is located in the answer.
'small' could be 's' (abbreviation - e.g. clothes size) and 's' is found within the answer.
'senior' could be 'oap' (old age pensioner) and 'oap' is present in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
'after' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for soap opera that I've seen before include "TV show" , "Fair City or Coronation Street, say" , "addictive programme?" , ""Coronation Street", for example" , "TV serial such as Coronation Street" .)