- #Soap tv show first episode serial#
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In the special, we talk about the rise of nighttime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty and Falcon Crest, which were huge in the 1980s. When do you think daytime soaps started to migrate from daytime TV? All of these things are completely built on what was already done in daytime.
It’s news programs, it’s reality programs, it’s these streaming content shows about real people that everyone lives for now.
#Soap tv show first episode serial#
I mean, obviously there was a precedent for that too, particularly serial writers like Charles Dickens, but I’m talking about the radio and television incarnation of that.
What daytime serials brought to everything else in the culture were these twisting, ongoing plotlines, serialization, open-endedness, and larger-than-life characters filled with huge contradictions. The only question is what the writers and filmmakers decide to do with that soapiness. I’m like, whaddaya mean, you don’t like soaps? Mad Men is a soap. Like The Sopranos or Mad Men, which happened to star Jon Hamm, who appears in this special and seems very enthusiastic about the connection. There are certain principles and practices that mark it as a soap, and the only question is whether it’s your kind of soap. Whether you are in agreement or not about whether a show you like is really a soap is irrelevant. One of my favorite things to say on Twitter - because it makes people mad - is, “Any show I don’t personally like is a soap.”Ī hundred percent. Soaps are looked at pejoratively in this society, but there was so much richness there. And so I started looking at soaps, and I realized that in terms of storyteling, this is where a lot of everything started. I was never a big soap opera fan, but as I was looking at reality TV as a subject, and as I got deeper and deeper into that process, I started to realize the extent to which reality TV is just carrying on what soaps started. When I pitched this to ABC, I was looking for a topic that bit into our deeper consciousness and that I could take a deep look into.
#Soap tv show first episode professional#
And it lays out its arguments so potently that after seeing it, it will become impossible to watch the Marvel franchise, the Godfather saga, professional wrestling, or Donald Trump’s press conferences without thinking about the soap opera’s knack for getting viewers on the hook and keeping them there.Īhead of The Story of Soaps’ premiere, I talked to executive producer and director Rebecca Gitlitz, who previously made primetime specials about Princess Diana and the British royal family, about the enduring legacy of soaps and its impact on the world beyond television. (Cranston, for instance, is cited as a cast member on Loving, One Life to Live and Breaking Bad.) The documentary makes a strong case that soaps - which had been dismissed over the decades as “trash” and “melodrama,” and gendered as “women’s entertainment” - are a legitimate but underappreciated popular art form. In cases where actors appeared on daytime soaps and the entertainment that borrowed from them, major credits are cheekily listed as if they’re all just soaps. Fox, Jon Hamm, and Bryan Cranston are mixed in with daytime acting fixtures like Susan Lucci and Genie Francis, as well as showrunners whose work channels the daytime spirit (such as Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry).
#Soap tv show first episode trial#
Simpson’s trial cited as the event that made the connection official), as well as the way that unscripted TV raids soaps for inspiration, making sure each new episode contains plentiful trash-talking, a crowd-pleasing confrontation or two, and a “shocking” twist at the end. There are even sections about the similarities between storytelling on soap operas and TV news coverage (with O.J. It also links soaps to the so-called “prestige dramas” of ‘80s and ‘90s and beyond, which drew on the soap opera tradition of open-ended storytelling and complex, contradictory, sometimes antiheroic characters.
#Soap tv show first episode plus#
It covers the evolution of daytime soaps on rival broadcast networks as well as ABC, plus the radio soaps that preceded them and the nightime soaps (notably CBS’ Dallas and ABC’s Dynasty) that followed. Moving back and forth through nearly a century’s worth of media, this is a real documentary, not just a cynical repurposing of one network’s intellectual property. Eastern on ABC, is a rare example of a broadcast network bankrolling scholarship that also happens to be entertaining. The Story of Soaps, which premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m. Luke and Laura’s wedding on General Hospital.
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