te.

Helmut Berger was actually perfectly cast as a complete Eurosleaze with a cocaine addiction, unfortunately, they never truly went there and clearly things were happening behind the scenes - I've long been of the opinion that season 7b was the worst of the show, but I think the middle part of season 4 beats it. The show just completely loses its way until the Hong Kong episodes, you have characters that are just milling about and worst of all they basically decide to neutralize several conflicts on the show for no real reason, all while the music is getting louder and louder signalling to us that something is happening, but nothing is.

Are you sure it wasn't Dynasty?

Maggie might gloss over it though - saying someone's a rape baby is a sensitive subject. Mind you, not that I think the writers are intelligent enough to take such things into account so never mind.

To be fair, we don't know if the characters know the circumstances around that, so they might think it was an affair as Laura and certainly Bill might've glossed over things.

I mean, I think the fact that Chris Atkins looked the way he did was intentional - Peter was never meant to represent a real threat to JR and if anything it became more sleazy because Atkins looked like a boy. They could've easily hired a 23-year old 6'3 stud, but then people might've actually taken the romance seriously.

To be fair, Capitol had a very cushy time slot plus is a clear "hammock" despite being in the middle of the ratings pack (ie it slumps between As the World Turns and Guiding Light. The only real option for it to survive was to retain ATWT/GL's ratings - and even then CBS would've had to move it to make room for B&B.

Well, at least Emily O'Brien is a better actor than Rob Wilson so at least she's hopefully going to be able to convey she's a different character.

I said it when Abby "died" and I'll say it again - she'll show up at Stephanie and Chad's wedding with a baby in tow.

From recent interviews Linda's sounds and moves around fine. She's just on the thin side and at that age it makes you look more frail than you are.

Yes, which is why I feel that it has to start with a preservation project at the very least to begin with - like, I could see Corday potentially digitizing DAYS as an example to preserve it, but the starting point can't probably be because anyone thinks it'll be financially rewarding.

I'd assume the audience size in Canada might not have made it financially possible to produce a long-running daytime soap, especially with part of the country being French-speaking? I'm guessing that's why attempts to produce soaps like Strange Paradise were syndicated in the US. Paradise Falls is on YouTube at least...

These sort of things always cracks me up on soaps - not like attorneys tend to specialise in certain sections of the law or something, same thing with doctors. Not that I'm complaining really since it gives characters stuff to do, plus the budget isn't there to hire more people anyway.

The 2004 version of Gramercy Park:

The lack of clearances really did ultimately kill a lot of these soaps - it's sort of something you rarely think about, but with only a 77% clearing rate it really puts it at a huge disadvantage. I'd assume that once Oprah goes national and then the 90s wave of sassy ladies talk shows, the clearing for the bottom soaps must've gotten even worse.

111 Gramercy Park is also on that channel: It was an attempt at a prime time soap by ABC that had two attempts at a pilot - a 2003 one and a 2004 one; ultimately, ABC didn't go with either, but it's obvious that ABC was looking for prime time soaps at that point (and eventually found one in Desperate Housewives).

Yeah, they definitively played the OG Laura storyline with slightly more ambigious - obviously, once they introduced Barnabus they'd decided to go full-on supernatural (though arguably, even early on in that storyline they did keep some things a bit vague in case they needed to backtrack).

This is great! The fact that these old episodes are still being found gives me hope that a lot more are out there.

Their new album will be out in early 2024 on BMG (aka Kylie, Steps' etc label).

Hey now, Johnny throws around a few italian phrases here and there!

The big issue is that those other soaps aren't digitized and that takes a lot of time and money to do; I suspect the reason why Bold is on streaming is because the Bells just kept up with the technology and probably had it digitized early (especially as they sold it in reruns to some countries in the past). If someone decides to digitize the archives that remains then *maybe* I could see it happening on some form of FAST service, but it would be more of a passion/preservation project and there are so many (shorter) tv shows and movies that it would take a long time before they came around to the soap archives.

Sydney really better be the child Sami deserves.

Well according to @Errol they're working on it - but lots of episodes and I'm sure they're either looking to license or replace some of the music. I assume they also are looking if they can sell it somewhere (ie IMDBTV or whatever it's called now) or put it on their own platforms.

I think the issue is that you're basing this on what people on niche soap forums (which in itself is a dying format) are saying, rather than would could concievably cross over at least a bit to a more casual audience beyond that. It's unfortunately obvious that "soap fans" aren't a big enough group to sustain these shows being uploaded, or else they would've been already.

In all honesty, the only old soaps that I could see being moderately "successful" on streaming are Passions and Sunset Beach; in Passions case it obviously has that cult factor going for it and the fact that it's very "meme" worthy (for better or worse) that could draw people in. Sunset Beach mostly because it was so popular in parts of Europe, again a bit meme worthy and had a limited run so that it doesn't feel like you're never going to finish it. The others... well. Maybe doing arcs could work, but then again would anyone outside the established fanbase want to watch those? I feel any few "casual" viewers would be turned off by the fact that they couldn't continue beyond it.