Vee

Deidre was, for awhile, a massive household star - double duty on those shows, both of which I remember at the time, and then a biopic movie starring herself. It's interesting that that's faded in recent times.

She was apparently involved in consulting on the Loving Murders. It showed in some of the production elements, promotion and bravura setpieces, IMO (the vignette with Danny and Ally's son stuck in a pit or whatever, with people's conversations being broadcast over radio in a very cinematic setup was straight out of her OLTL work). I don't know if she was involved in crafting The City. I do think losing Ava was a blow.

I agree. Fortunately I don't think Trek is anywhere near as oversaturated as Marvel or SW. One show is ending and that will leave only one live-action show, for now.

Star Trek is actually doing pretty well atm, after a rocky start with Discovery; the various other shows since are a lot better (well, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, Lower Decks and the excellent final season of Picard which was mostly a strong victory lap for the TNG cast and will likely get a much-clamored-for spinoff with Jeri Ryan and co). The shows aren't the issue there, it's the platform (Paramount) which has had to repeatedly sell them or the past classic series off to other outlets for cash and is probably going to go down soon and be subsumed into Netflix or something else. The animated all-ages Trek spinoff, Prodigy, has already been ported to Netflix and renewed there. This from Paramount, which proclaimed itself 'the home of Trek' a year or so ago because it makes them their big money - just not enough to stay afloat. That's the streaming crash. I think Trek as a renewed franchise will survive elsewhere, but I don't think Paramount will. I do hope people look into FreeVee or other FAST platforms like Pluto. That's the key. Neighbours shows it, but no one in the States has the kind of faith in a soap that overseas execs seemingly do in Neighbours.

You think I won't see this @Darn?! Sleep with one eye open!* * - this is a joke, we are friends who are joking unlike the rest of this thread

Sydney was mentioned here and there in the final weeks/months of LOV as being a big deal and somewhat fearsome. But it wasn't really much and of course Fairchild didn't appear. Nonetheless, The City had great style and production value ahead of its time, and a cast that I thought had a lot of potential - the stories just were poorly done.

Lord. I liked Annalynne McCord on 90210 but she'll be a real interesting Abby recast if that turns out to be true, lol. What!

The UK soaps always splash out on good promotion. But the stories don't hold up in recent years. I am curious to see whatever this is just as a lapsed fan, but I never hang around since that unfortunate Michelle recast a few years ago. I do wonder where it streams now.

Just wanted to chime in the revival of Neighbours has been an extremely educational experience on Amazon FreeVee. You learn a lot watching a soap build or rebuild itself from the ground up, same as with AMC and OLTL 2.0. Similar lessons in some ways, but often more skillful build-up/pacing. I encourage everyone who's a scholar of the genre to check it out, and I'd never really watched it before. They appear to be making it work, unlike Prospect Park (with a lot more institutional support and BTS experience). I do think FreeVee-style ad-supported streaming is the only way forward for soaps. Was it @DramatistDreamer who always preached about FAST? AMC and OLTL were onto it too quick and had poor management and funding, but they could last if it were today (and probably arc-based with breaks - I don't think anyone over here is going to give the soaps the continued year-round capital Neighbours seems to have). And who knows, in another year or two the networks and streamers may be desperate enough for continued revenue to try. Which Khan said above (sorry Khan, I just need to stop @ing people in this post). IBut I agree with @Errol that primetime is a cutthroat zone, especially in the streaming era - nothing can be counted on to last, and the pacing of most network dramas is now incredibly accelerated and schizoid as of at least the last decade-plus. We saw that going back to even the first seasons of Empire, or the misbegotten Spelling soap revivals on CW. Letting story breathe is discouraged because they're scared people will turn them off and switch on Netflix.

I do think later would've helped. But there was no way they were gonna bump GH up or down the afternoon schedule for TC. GH by that time was already revitalized as the past and present flagship of ABC soaps, and kids everywhere (me included) flocked to it afterschool. (You don't wanna know how many school days I faked sick to catch OLTL an hour before, until I learned how to time-record a VCR.) In hindsight it's kind of a wonder GL survived as long as it did during this period at 3 PM opposite GH, but that's another thread.

The youth set on TC was more than enough for the show's demographics, I think. That was the focus in those days, hot young twentysomethings. Found family was not the draw of MP, but it was a common thing you saw in dramas or sitcoms at the time (Friends, etc.). It's true the popularity of MP evolved later in its more high-octane, super-soapy storytelling that began near the end of its first season, but I don't think TC's setup was at all uncommon for ensemble TV.

You guys have got to stop taking extremely obvious bait.

Slightly longer version. And a lovely story from Millie Gibson about getting advice from Karen Gillan, Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill.

Credit where it is due to Kasie Hunt: She runs him down in this thread. Embeds are failing, so I would post more about the WP buyout/layoffs and James Bennet's latest, insanely long screed in The Economist about how emotional liberals are to blame for him being fired from the Times over that infamous Tom Cotton op-ed, but I'll wait.

Another fun clip from the Christmas special:

Deadwood is one of my all-time shows. Looking back at NYPD Blue recently on Prime too it's astonishing what they were allowed to get away with just in terms of visual style and tone on network TV, at least in the early years. But of course that also came out of what I've seen of Hill Street Blues. I've only seen a little of the early stuff but it was my father's favorite.

The latest Blue Peter winner goes BTS at Doctor Who. Her name: Verity.

Sorry about the paywall - none came up for me so I linked it directly.

Since we no longer have the status feed after a now-banned member used it as their burn book and I didn't know where else to put this, I thought this old thread might be appropriate for this piece about David Milch, writing his last screenplay with Alzheimer's.

Back in February with an hour-long premiere!

Another for @DRW50, from the commentary for "The Giggle" only available in the UK:

It is interesting to me how much the end of The Giggle and the conclusion with Fifteen urging Fourteen to seek help and settle down, 'do rehab' (which makes Fifteen the more contented and stable character he is - he is the future product of that Earthbound rehab) connects with the Tales of the TARDIS shorts. Particularly RTD's - he wrote the specials but also the (very good) Five/Tegan Tales short in which they discuss the events of Earthshock. In that short, Tegan says many of the things Donna says to Fourteen in the specials; that he never stops running, never takes care of his mental and emotional health after the traumas they suffered. The aged Five then suggests that perhaps the memory TARDIS they find themselves in is a form of therapy, something Fifteen tells Fourteen to get. From what we've been told since the last special, the aged Doctors in the Tales shorts are almost certainly their bi-generated selves from the alternate, split timelines created retroactively by the events of The Giggle - I believe either Colin's or McCoy's confirms this in their short, that they are from AUs where they never regenerate. What I'm curious about now is if we will see the memory TARDIS from Tales in future episodes of the main show. It's obviously a setup and an ethos that RTD has some investment in. As for Fourteen, I hope he is relegated to rare, perhaps feature-length specials in series hiatus periods, preferably 3-5 years apart. I've enjoyed the iteration but less is more.

What Wikipedia claims (and what wouldn't surprise me is true) is that Frons himself and Frank Valentini ghostwrote a week or two of material between Malone and Higley. I do remember claims at the time that Dena and Frank had rewritten portions of the Santi story climax on the fly - Cristian had returned from the dead brainwashed by Tico to kill Governor Brooks (who Kevin was running as Lieutenant Governor with) on Election Night, and so on. I think all that Manchurian Candidate stuff was Malone, but some of the latter half (and the subsequent stupid reveal-upon-reveal that Cristian was an 'imposter', only to turn out not to be an imposter, and Cris shooting Tico instead I think and his mysterious death in the hospital) was Higley. There is a precedent for this - JFP, who was the apple of Angela Shapiro's eye, went without a HW for most of 1999 before being forced to hire future bestie Megan McTavish. And here's the Storm of Change promo I still remember (and was so excited for): Malone and Griffith had apparently been ghostwriting on the show in January and possibly parts of December '02. It showed - the scripts and acting (specifically, Roger Howarth, who'd been phoning it in for years but brought it big time in scenes in which Todd learned Mitch had raped Viki) leveled up tremendously. Frankly a lot of that ghost month was better than what came later. And meanwhile, Howarth has later revealed he took the nearest exit right around this time when learning about a future story - the tale of this from that podcast we've recently brought up is, I think, muddled by the show's soap-unfamiliar host and confused with rumors from the '90s about Todd and Marty. But the rumor at the time, in '03-'04, was that Howarth left over the "Rashomon"-style 'was it rape?' story planned for Todd and Blair, the story that played out at the end of 2003 instead with Trevor St. John. And based on Howarth's recent comments about a friend passing him the number of the EP at ATWT when he was stressed about continuing at OLTL, I believe it.

It's all worked out!

No. That was the "Storm of Change," which was the big event ushering Malone and Griffith back, when ABC heavily promoted at the time as the star writers of the '90s returning. It was in February of 2003. During those weeks Nora walked in on Troy and Lindsay together and dumped him, Joey returned amidst the blizzard, Flash/Sarah hit town, Mitch kidnapped Natalie and Jessica and tried to force Viki to choose which one of them would get undead Victor's heart, etc. I was very excited for it but after the first week or so (which had Nora's great confrontation with Troy, and one of the kinkiest love scenes in soap history with Troy and Lindsay) it became quite a mess - Victor turning up alive, etc. Dena didn't arrive til late 2004, when Malone was fired. And by late I mean late November-December - the last of Malone's work aired somewhere in the November sweeps period IIRC with an assassination attempt at Governor Harrison Brooks, and it was Higley whose big brainchild pitch (Tess) I think may have killed Tico Santi. I think Higley also had a hand in some rewrites to that election climax.