@vetsoapfan @soapfan770 @Khan @Vee @slick jones @Paul Raven @All My Shadows @Soaplovers @te. @kalbir @SoapDope78 @Soapsuds @Franko @janea4old @I Am A Swede @Chris B @dc11786

At about 28 minutes there's a promo for the extremely rare and short-lived Beacon Hill, the American copy of Upstairs, Downstairs.

Musical Chairs Ep. 55 (~Sept. 1, 1975)

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by DRW50

Thanks @DRW50 Beacon Hill was always going to be a risky proposition.

PBS made Upstairs, Downstairs a hit for them, but I'm sure the numbers were nowhere near what would be acceptable for a network

Upstairs/Downstairs fans would probably be (rightly) cynical of a US version and regular CBS viewers wouldn't know how to deal with a videotaped period piece. But initial ratings showed some curiosity and interest but it didn't last once the full schedule was in place. And there were BTS dramas as well.

BH debuted in a 2hr special Mon Aug 25 preseason and notched up a 23.1/42 share up against a rpt of Legend of Lizzie Borden ABC 18.2/33 and Baseball NBC 9.1/16

The following Tues it had its timeslot premiere, again up against repeats and earned a 31 share.

Once the season was underway BH earned a 14,6/27 up against Marcus Welby and Joe Forrester 19.3/36

But BH's lead in Switch had a 22.9/39 so there was big fall off.

By October there was no going back as BH was amongst the lowest rated shows. It was cancelled before Nov sweeps.

I noticed Michael Nouri in the cast. Did he get time off from SFT ? I'm sure a lot of NY actors hoped the show would take off as there would have been jobs to be had.

Thanks for the extra info.

Vaguely related, I'll just seeing Michael Nouri's elderly ass on The Pitt this season was not on my 2026 bingo card. Props to him for no vanity.

Thanks! I think Beacon Hill is one of those things that's more a curiosity, but once it's seen people will be... disappointed.

2 hours ago, Vee said:

just seeing Michael Nouri's elderly ass on The Pitt this season was not on my 2026 bingo card.

Now if he had shown ass BITD on SFT that might be a different story.

6 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@vetsoapfan @soapfan770 @Khan @Vee @slick jones @Paul Raven @All My Shadows @Soaplovers @te. @kalbir @SoapDope78 @Soapsuds @Franko @janea4old @I Am A Swede @Chris B

At about 28 minutes there's a promo for the extremely rare and short-lived Beacon Hill, the American copy of Upstairs, Downstairs.

Musical Chairs Ep. 55 (~Sept. 1, 1975)

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.

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by vetsoapfan

Thanks for the tag, @DRW50. That is some hairdo on Kathryn Walker, who played Fawn. My go-tos for Kathryn are Neighbors, where she played John Belushi's wife (and Lauren-Marie Taylor's mom!), and Special Bulletin, where she's kind of a Barbara Walters takeoff.

@vetsoapfan I'm glad to hear from someone who watched the show. It is frustrating how many times shows improve only when it's too late. From what you've said Anne's only successful soap stint seems to have been GH.

@te. I agree - the power of what we don't know is often more interesting than the reality. Still, for completion's sake, I wish some was available.

@Franko I haven't seen Neighbors since I was a kid. I should rewatch sometime. I wonder if she is as broad in that film.

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by DRW50

Thanks @DRW50 . I feel like it's very rarely, if ever, happened where a the US remakes a UK series that's already been established here (and vice versa). If the audience already knows and accepted the original series, what's the point of trying to do it all over again in a form that you know will fall short? Filming it rather than taping might have actually saved it by welcoming less comparison and allowing it to have a different vibe/style.

Side note, it's pretty amazing that "Musical Chairs" has been mostly recovered and preserved. Gives me so much hope for other games/soaps.

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

From what you've said Anne's only successful soap stint seems to have been GH.

And I think even that's up for debate, as it seems a lot of longtime GH fans around here who watched during that time have said that what saved GH back then was Gloria Monty's production and the fact that so many well-loved characters remained front-and-center.

4 hours ago, Franko said:

Thanks for the tag, @DRW50. That is some hairdo on Kathryn Walker, who played Fawn. My go-tos for Kathryn are Neighbors, where she played John Belushi's wife (and Lauren-Marie Taylor's mom!), and Special Bulletin, where she's kind of a Barbara Walters takeoff.

Special Bulletin mentioned!!!!

Anyway, yes she's amazing in it. And it's on YT.

13 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@vetsoapfan @soapfan770 @Khan @Vee @slick jones @Paul Raven @All My Shadows @Soaplovers @te. @kalbir @SoapDope78 @Soapsuds @Franko @janea4old @I Am A Swede @Chris B @dc11786

At about 28 minutes there's a promo for the extremely rare and short-lived Beacon Hill, the American copy of Upstairs, Downstairs.

Musical Chairs Ep. 55 (~Sept. 1, 1975)

Thanks for posting the link to the rare promo of Beacon Hill.