vetsoapfan

YES! With a drastic overhaul of the writing for the character, James Marsters would have been amazing as Sebastian. Instead, the character became an awkward failure who disappeared, never to be thought about again.

No one--least of all me--will deny Laurence Olivier's and William Wyler's obvious talents--but that version of WH was just so stiff and mannered. The whole point of WH is that Heathcliff has the barely-contained sprit of an untamed beast, and neither he nor Catherine is meant to be aloof, reserved and able to control emotions.

I think TBTB are more concerned with potential profitability over any artistic concerns. If if comes down to casting shiny bright lights of the day, or attempting to stay true to the source material, the source material is often tossed aside. Really, the casting for the new Wuthering Heights boggles my mind. The insta-child not only watered down Roger and one of the principle motivations for his behavior, but Hart himself never really jelled. Did the writers even have a concrete definition of what type of person he was supposed to be, and what they intended to do with him? It seemed Hart changed direction with every new actor hired No, it ended up not mattering much at all, which was a failure on the writers' part. If they just had to introduce Hart through wonky revisionist history, the character should have had a serious, dramatic impact on established Sprinfieldians like Roger and Blake. It was all such a waste. NOW, an even worse blunder on the part of the show (producers, casting directors, writers) was introducing Doug Hutchinson as Sebastian Hulce, Roger's other son. What a disaster. The actor was woefully miscast; he came across as creepy and smarmy, and NOT in a good way. Hutchinson may have been perfectly fine in other roles (I don't know, I've never seen him in anything else), but his "je ne sais quoi" on TGL was such a major repellant. I wanted him gone immediately. I prayed every day he would be replaced by James Marsters, lol. I knew Sebastian was not going to be long for this world.

Sadly, the last time I checked, many of the episode were on YT, but not all. And a lot of the ones there were of poor quality and badly cut up. I'm going to check again now, to see if any better copies have been uploaded. GOOD NEWS: A kind soul has, indeed, been uploading this show, and in good, uncut quality too. Here's a playlist list for seasons 1 and 2:

To me, the writers did not really develop the role of Julie very deeply, particularly at the beginning. She was put in the confining mold The Good Blonde Girl, and did not seem to have many layers or depth.

Yep, details matter except to a lot of TIIC who produce the material. Do we really need ANOTHER version of Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights? Really? To me, the Colin Firth version of P&P is definitive, and no one is ever going to top it. I have never seen a version of WH which I was satisfied with; even the 1939 version with Laurence Olivier was truncated and stiff. The casting for this new version is egregious. The actors chosen may be great for many roles, but not Catherine and Heathcliff. Ugh.

What made it even worse, and showed how lazy the writers were, Josh remarked to the alleged Ruthledge descendant, "Your grandfather was a legend in this town." Um, no. Not only was it improbable/impossible for the original John Ruthledge to have had a grandson with his family name, but RJR did not even live in Springfield to begin with. If writers are going to give a nod to the past, at least they should make a nominal effort to research it.

It was short-sighted of CBS to axe Executive Suite so quickly. Most soaps take a while to "build" and really take off. Dallas and Dynasty both had tepid ratings in their first seasons. I think ES might have made it if given more time for viewers to find it, although IMHO, either W.E.B. nor Beacon Hill stood much of a chance after their weak writing became apparent.

In my heart, I would like to believe that the dearth of character-driven series like Family on TV today was what ignited the emotional response to Heated Rivalry. Fans of intimate, nuanced character dramas are not necessarily satisfied with a steady diet of generic action/adventure/sci-fi/supernatural/comic-book material. I crave to see literate, mature series more often .

I hope the official DVD releases of PP will eventually continue. As far as I can tell, they have been discontinued, which almost always means they are dead in the water, but occasionally axed TV-series releases do get picked up by another company. Fingers crossed.

I watched both Executive Suite and W.E.B. Of the three shows being discussed (BH, ES and W.E.B.), I thought Executive Suite was the best. Henry Slesar, Rita Lakin and Rick Edelstein (soap writers whose work I've always appreciated) offered up some fine scripts, and the cast was solid. W.E.B., to me, was "meh." Not great, not atrocious, but just rather bland and lethargic. The acting was fine, but none of the characters ever clicked for me, and I just never became invested in the drama. As previously noted, Beacon Hill had great potential, but did not live up to anything great when it actually aired.

Gordon Russell and Sam Hall.

Yep, Kim was deaf, and the best remedy to dealing with conflicting reports is to watch the show and find out, first-hand. PP is available in its entirety (for free) on Youtube.

Thanks, @DRW50 . Yes, I have seen the great, informative post by @dc11786 . I appreciate what he brings to the board.🙂

You asked me this same question. Why do you doubt the character was deaf? She was, according to the broadcast episodes of Peyton Place. They're available to watch on Youtube if you'd like to verify. As an added bonus, the eps are fun to watch anyway.🙂

I had such high expectations for Beacon Hill, and hoped it would be a classy, American version of Upstairs, Downstairs, which I enjoyed. The first episode was atrociously written, and TBTB seemed to be treating the series as low-brow camp. I expected Jerry Lewis to pop up as The Nutty Professor at any moment, LOL. When I saw that the writer was Anne Howard Bailey, whose abysmal writing had tanked How to Survive a Marriage and doomed that daytime soap to failure, I was crestfallen. With hackneyed caricatures and shallow scripts at BH's core, I quickly predicted it would be a bomb. Most frustratingly, weeks into its run, the writing suddenly took an upwards swing. HTSAM had had the thing happen: after AHB was replaced by the great Rick Edelstein, the quality of the writing surged. Alas, neither the viewers of HTSAM nor BH gave those dramas a second chance; once burned, twice shy, I suppose. I stuck with Beacon Hill out of morbid curiosity, wondering if the network and/or show runners would do anything to turn the series around. I had watched the debuts of several soaps (HTSAM, Bright Promise, Return to Peyton Place, Where the Heart Is, among others) whose early days were stained by poor writing...but suddenly rebounded when new scribes were brought in. Unfortunately, none of those soaps were able to recover from their disastrous beginnings.

@Reverend Ruthledge , I'm pleasantly surprised to see you uploading all these valuable synopses/history lessons so quickly. It must be a lot of work. Thank you for the time and effort you are devoting to the task. The more you remind us of the past, the more I want to relive those glory days again. As your recaps approach the 1960s, you are very close to hitting the year which I began watching TGL (1963-ish, IIRC). I wonder how many first-hand memories your summaries will unlock in me!

Honestly, while I am aware of who Kimberly Beck is, I have no strong feelings about her one way or the other. I felt she was adequate in the roles I happened to see her in, but (IMHO) she was not destined for superstardom. I'd say she had the moderate amount of success in the industry I would have expected. She found work in the industry for three decades, which is better than a lot of other aspiring actresses. I'll give her that.🙂

As far as I remember, yes, the character of Kim was really deaf. I generally dislike most horror material (with a few exceptions), and did not watch the Friday the 13th saga

I thought Kimberly Beck was adequate, but didn't show a lot of depth or range in the role. IMO, Catherine Hickland was warmer and a better actress, although the role of Julie was always too limited to be interesting, under either actress. The ratings for Capitol were not atrocious, so I probably would not have cancelled it, but like so many soaps with multiple head-writer changes, the writing was a problem which needed to be addressed if the show wanted to succeed better. No, I have neither heard of nor seen such a series.

I read both the books after I had already seen all three miniseries, and while I enjoyed the books, there were significant differences between them and the various TV versions. The BMT mini probably honored the BMT novel more than RMPM or RMPM II series remained faithful to the original book, however.

Lemay started reducing the number of sub-writers in the latter years of his tenure at AW, which would correspond to when the show's quality began to suffer. Honestly, however, there was too much work for anyone to do (no matter how talented any writer was) without a huge amount of assistance. Well said, and ITA.

Yes, he remained at AW until 1979. I agree his work was stellar during the first few years of his tenure (1971-1975), but then his writing seemed to become inconsistent; good points mixed in with bad. Unfortunately, he got weaker towards the end of his run. Even Lemay, himself, acknowledged that he got burned out.

I know who Kimberly Beck is. I first watched her in 1965 ,when she was a child actress and appeared as Kim Shuster on the primetime soap Peyton Place. Later, in 1977, she played a totally different character in the TV movie Murder in Peyton Place. Of all the projects she has been in, I liked the quirky cult film Massacre at Central High (1977). While it was ultra-low budget and had its weaknesses, it had a certain somethin g which made it curiously interesting. And yes, I watched Capitol throughout Beck's run as Julie Clegg. I don't believe she's done much film or television work in many years, aside from performing a few voice-over parts.

Actually, strangely enough, I enjoyed the novel Beggarman Thief much more than the TV miniseries version of it. The casting felt off, which alienated me, and everything just struck me as artificial and contrived. I forced myself to watch it, but did not enjoy the experience. I think the original Rich Man, Poor Man with Nick Nolte had set the bar so high for me that the pale follow-ups were never going to satisfy me.