Santa Barbara/Sunset Beach

[cody_1990]

Do you think NBC tried to bring back Santa Barbara in the form of Sunset Beach?

I will post what I think later!

[bellcurve]

I think so, but they went about it the WRONG WAY.

BEACH, although still entertaining, is still regarded to many SB fans as a "low-rent" version of the show. A poster here once said he thought they were practically the same show. And I'm not sure if I can agree with that, having never seen SB before.

I acquired some tapes from Eddie Druedling of SB awhile back, and I must admit I enjoyed what I saw, but I didn't see exactly WHAT made this show earn their Emmys other than it standing out from everything else in daytime with its awesome budget and talented actors. But I think these episodes dated well before their first Emmy Win in 1987/8(?). I must've picked shows that had very moot SB points. It's also not fair to merely judge a show based on having seen four episodes through tape trading. I do admit, the acting was really good on SB as was some of the humor.

I think it is unfair to compare one show to another, especially when both of them covered two different eras...one driven by gloss and Reaganism and the other the Clinton Administration. Television, humor, and drama had changed by then.

Personally, I would have rather seen NBC develop either AREMID(without Melissa Reeves) or UNION PLACE(Claire Labine Soap) instead of SUNSET BEACH, as much as I loved the show and still quote it and watch it. UNION PLACE would have been awesome and would have been another NY Soap to add to the lineup.

Both NBC and ABC(where the show was later known as HEART AND SOUL as a half-hour Ned/Lois/Tracy spinoff) were idiots for not picking up Labine's soap. No wonder why she's still sour about the industry.

[Ryan]

Could you go into more detail about the shows you named bellcurve?

[juniorz1]

Sunset Beach was a carbon-copy of SB, minus the creative vision, brilliant writing, and irreverent wit of Bridget & Jerome Dobson. The Richards are to the Capwells as Ricardo is to Cruz, etc...... If Annie isn't Gina, I don't know who is... SUN tried to have a sense of humor- unfortunately, it was a more low-brow type of humor than we saw on SB.

In short (and I could go on all day & have), when NBC picked up and promoted Sunset Beach just a few years after cancelling SB...... I felt insulted. Slapped in the face.

I watched SUN and enjoyed it for what it was while keeping in mind what it wasn't.

[Dr. Chip]

I enjoyed "Santa Barbara" back in the day, but I never could get into "Sunset Beach" and don't think it was all that similar to the earlier show. The Annie character was weird, there was some bad acting, and there was no Louise Sorel! :-)

[Manny]

I don't think they were the same. The only thing they had in common for me were the innitials.

I watched almost the entire SB and I watched entire SuBe.

So SuBe had a rich a family, a cop and a wacky vixen... THAT makes it a copy of SB???? What soap DOESN'T have a rich family, a cop and a wacky vixen?! Okay, maybe not the wacky vixen.. that's really rare these days.

But it's not like Ricardo was dating Caitlin. Or that Gregory and Olivia had three kids where the oldest child wasn't Olivia, but from Gregory's first marriage.

It's not like C.C. was a crazy evil dude that killed people.

Not sure about this one, but was Sophia a sluty alcoholic that slept with Cruz?

Nah, I don't think SuBe was a SB copy... They might have had the same style of storytelling or something like that, but to say that SuBe was a copy... no way.

[bellcurve]

Talking about the proposed shows?

AREMID(as soap fans have coloquially referred to it as) was a proposed DAYS spinoff that was set to take place in...surprise...the town of Aremid and was set to star Melissa Reeves, Jason Brooks, and Mark Valley. It was also set to star hot daytime newcomer Kristi McDaniel(ex-Sarah, DAYS). Many often think Sarah's character and the character of Theresa were both very similar in that they were hopeless romantics. Many also think the PASSIONS bible borrowed from elements of the AREMID spinoff.

The AREMID spinoff would have been co-owned by Corday Productions and NBC Studios. But thanks to alleged affair between Missy Reeves and Jason Brooks, the show never saw the light of day.

Fast-forward to mid-1996. It's widely known over the internet that UNION PLACE was the bible Claire Labine worked on after her successful run at GENERAL HOSPITAL. It was to take place in a neighborhood in New York City and be taped in NYC. It is speculated that everyone was interested in this project, including PGP. But NBC was considering this project, along with two others, one with Stephen J. Cannell(about lawyers in Chicago) and an Aaron Spelling project(that would be later known as SUNSET BEACH). As we all know, we know who won that one!

Labine later pitched UNION PLACE as a half-hour GENERAL HOSPITAL spinoff titled HEART AND SOUL to ABC upon the demise of THE CITY. It would star Wally Kurth and Rena Softer, along with Jane Elliot(whose Tracy character had already moved to NYC thanks to the crossover from CITY). Some even speculated Jason and Robin would make the move, but I doubt that. All the planets were in alignment for this spinoff...until Wendy Riche pitched an LA Based GH Spinoff(tenatively titled GH2)for the networks. And ABC saw what other people see in LA Based shows, as in being cheaper to produce than NY Shows. So, they went with GH2, which later became PORT CHARLES.

Hope that helped.

[Cat]

ITA -- both shows were completely different. SB was Daytime with a Primetime twist -- very "method-y" and naturalistic acting and dialogue that was razor-sharp. SuBe was an Aaron Spelling show for Daytime that often let the viewer know that they, too, were in on the joke. Two totally different beasts.

Only thing that made me think "Santa Barbara" when watching Sunset Beach were that they used one or two of the sets that used to be on SB. Oh, and they dropped in a couple of SB references with a wink and a smile for longtime NBC fans.

But other than that, very different shows. I loved both, though. They were my favorites -- at different periods -- for a long time.

I would say that GH is more "Santa Barbara" than SuBe ever was -- what with all the cast, producers, writers and crew they got from SB. GH can be like a distorted version of SB in that the acting style is very similar, as are some of the directing techniques and montages, too. However, SB didn't always have GH's problem with repetitive writing, an obsessive focus on 3-4 characters only, and a vengeful writer who not only writes off characters he cannot be bothered with, but kills them off in the most twisted way so that they can permanently never return. Stefan? AJ? Faith? Alan? I'm surprised Laura was not decapitated back on 2003 so that he'd never have to bother with "the ball and chain dragging down Luke," since that is what he obviously thinks of her.

[juniorz1]

I'm not saying they were at all alike. But I do think that SUN was trying to recapture the Santa Barbara magic, while putting their own spin on it.

Robert Guza & Meg Bennett were the writers that helped create the series, both having had a long history with SB.

[Cat]

Yeah, Robert Guza and Meg Bennett are definitely part of the Santa Barbara Brain Trust! Meg Bennett's tenure at SuBe was especially assured. However, what happened to Guza since SB, huh? For that matter, what happened to JFP and Frons who actually presided over Santa Barbara's glory days?

However, I always figured that SuBe was more Aaron Spelling's baby and that he wanted to refashion his flops Malibu Shores and Pacific Palisades into a Daytime soap hybrid. Guza in particular spent a lot of time on the writing staff of many Spelling shows (Melrose, PP, etc) so I figured that he was a safe pair of hands to write a soap and give it the Spelling sheen. JMHO, of course.

[heatherwebber]

I've never heard of Aremid. Was this a Reilly creation?

I remember reading about a bunch of other Days spinoffs over the years which never got picked up. There was Pacific Lives, Manhattan Lives, a comedy soap with Calliope, and even I think some kind of kids show Salem High or some such.

But this Aremid thing is a complete shock to me.

But as to the topic in question I don't think Santa Barbara or Sunset Beach were really similar in most ways. They looked similar in some ways but the feel, cast, writing & everything else was completely different. They both had their share of problems but usually completely different problems. Post-Dobsons Santa B. was awful for most of the run despite generating the same kind of fan intensity which is keeping GH a dreadful mess under this regime. Lousy writing & fans only watching to see the actor they love in action no matter how bad the show really is.

Santa B. just kept getting worse and worse except for a brief period of time Jackie Smith was at NBC actively working on fixing some of the problems. And then later when the Dobsons returned for one year it perked up again every so briefly. But too little too late. So much damage had been done over the years. The Pam Long run was also not bad but was not Santa Barbara. It was a different show altogether. It was much more domestic and like the other soaps especially GL with Reva front-burnered.

Sunset started out with a lot of problems and very troubled. At times it sort of worked and other times it was just a complete mess. I enjoyed the Margaret DePriest run. But she brought her own vision to the show which didn't match before or after. As for the rest of it I truly have no interest in ever seeing any of that stuff ever again.

[Max]

In SuBe's pilot episode, I like how Meg was searching for somebody who went by the online name of "SB." I thought that was a nice nod to SaBa.

Although this hardly makes the two shows similar, weren't both SaBa and SuBe filmed at NBC's Burbank studios?

[chuck89]

Yes,both SB and SUBE were taped at NBC Studio 11 in Burbank,which is currently where the Ellen DeGeneres show is produced. The entrance of Studio 11 was used for the exterior shots for SUBE's South Bay hospital.

Portions of some SB sets showed up on SUBE.

Parts of Cruz and Eden's beach house(including the staircase style bookshelves)were recycled into Annie/Bette/Olivia's beach house. I think that the first Richards house and Elaine's Waffle House/Shockwave Restaurant may have also been recycled SB sets as well.

All of this is because both shows shared the same production designer,George Becket.

Dominic Messinger and Rick Rhodes composed the background music on both shows as well.

Here is a link to a picture of the SB/SUBE/Ellen Degeneres studio,NBC Studio 11 in Burbank.......

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/58/167477748_2cc7629a47.jpg

[Toups]

I don't believe Rhodes composed music for SuBe. It was just Messinger.

Directors: Anthony Morina, Peter Brinkerhoff, Rick Bennewitz, Andrew Lee, Grant A Johnson worked on both shows.

Lisa Hesser (now Lisa De Cazotte) was a Producer and Tony Koper was Technical Director for both.

Gary Tomlin, SuBe's Executive Producer, was a writer on SB

Writers SB and SuBe had in common:

Charles Pratt Jr. (never wrote for SuBe; co-created it and was a consultant)

Josh Griffith (never wrote for SuBe, just co-created it)

Robert Guza Jr.

Meg Bennett

Christopher Dunn

Richard Culliton

Jane Atkins

[cody_1990]

The setting of both shows(Both set in a seaside town)were the same. The names of the shows are kind of similar, and like people have already posted some of the characters are almost like each others twins. I also think some of the storylines were the same. Both shows did a Serial Killer storyline, and a Earthquake storyline to try and get ratings up early on.

Another interesting thing I noticed about both shows is, Both shows were not hits at home but were very big hits internationally. Do you think that is because people thought the shows were similar?