The thread about Lynne Marie Latham and her involvement in many nightime soaps reminded me of how popular the genre was back in the day.I'm hoping you might join me in reminiscing about some of those shows.

Although more often than not they were short lived,many were well executed and given the chance could've caught on.Soaps need time for audiences to get involved in character and story but the networks didn't show a lot of patience.

Many soap names appeared in these shows.

Two shows I enjoyed:

Berrengers-1985 NBC Sat@10

About a NY department store,it starred Sam Wanamaker,Yvette Mimieux and Ben Murphy.

Also included in the cast - Jonelle Allen(Generations) Andrea Marcovicci(LIAMST) Alan Feinstein (EON)

Jeff Conaway (B& Jack Scalia (AMC)

Saturday at that time was not doing well for NBC and the thinking was this was not the spot for a soap as many people were out and could not commit to a weekly serial.

The Yellow Rose

NBC Sat @10

Set on a modern day Texas ranch,it starred Cybill Sheppard,Sam Eliot,Chuck Conors David Soul and Edward Albert(PC).Jane Russell also made some appearances.

Beaten in the ratings by Fantasy Island.

What other shows do you recall?

Models, Inc - Fox 1994-1995

Spin-off to Melrose Place transplanting Amanda Woodward's mother Hillary Michaels to this show. Set in Los Angeles , it revolved around Hillary's company Models, Inc and the employees.

It starred: Linda Gray (Dallas) Emma Samms (GH), Brian Gaskill (ATWT, PC, GL) and Teresa Hill (GL).

FOX cancelled this show after it's second season, while I enjoed it, I guess it never caught on.

Pacific Palisades - Fox 1997

This one-hour drama follows the lives of young professionals who have it all, but haven't paid for it yet, on the Southern California fast track to fame, fortune, scandal and ruin. It starred: Michelle Stafford (YR), Finola Hughes (GH, AMC) Joycelyn Seagrave (GL) and Dylan Neal (BB).

I enjoyed this drama, unfortunately it came out after 90210 and Melrose were losing steam. I believe they even brought Joan Collins on to save the show.

Some more for the list.Seems CBS was more interested in the genre than ABC or NBC,probably due to the success of Dallas,Knots and Falcon Crest.

Angel Falls CBS Sept 93 Thursdays @10

After her father passes away, Rae Dawn Snow decides to pack up and move back to Angel Falls, her home town in the woods of Montana. Coming back to her roots, she rekindles an old romance with Eli Harrison, while her 16-year-old son strikes up a relationship with Eli's daughter.

Starring James Brolin,Peggy Lipton,Kim Catrall,Jean Simmons,Brian Kerwin(KL&Y/R)Grace Zabriskie (SB)

Don't know much about this one.Scheduled just before the fall season premieres in the Knots Landing timeslot.Played out its 6 episodes.

Emerald Point NAS CBS 83-84 Mondays@10

The interlocking worlds of the military and big business.

Starring Dennis Weaver,Maud Adams,JillSt John, Susan Dey,Charles Frank(AMC)Richard Dean Anderson(GH)Robert Loggia(SFT)

The ratings were OK for this one andCBS gave it a full season but they obviously didn't have enough faith in the show to try for a2nd season. Cagney & Lacey took the timeslot in the following season and was a big hit.

i was addicted to Melrose Place, Savannah, Felicity, Once & Again, Party of 5, and Silk Stalkings.

Flamingo Road

A true camp classic from 1981 starring Morgan Fairchild as a rich resident bitch down in Florida and youuuuuung Mark Harmon as her hubby who's soon looking for greener pastures.

Also starring David Selby, Howard Duff and John Beck.

Saw pieces of a prime time soap from the late 70's or early 80's in a history of TV/media kind of class in college that evidently was the first youth-based night-time serial (pre-90210 by ten years), it was called "The Secrets Of Midland Heights". Evidently it ran just a few episodes on CBS and was re-tooled and showed up a year later on ABC as "King's Crossing"...not sure if that was a spin-off or just the same producers and alot of the same actors...we only saw clips of the "Midland Heights" series (teasers, intro, etc.) in discussing the evolution of the youth soap and catering to the young demographic! Maybe someone else remembers these two as this class is the only place I know of them from! I think the girl from "The Terminator" movie line was in them...Linda Hamilton.

First prime-time soap I actually remember was "Twin Peaks", I was like seven or eight but something about it appealed to me, granted I didn't get half of it but I was still there every week! LOL! Watching it on DVD later in life was a trip! I can't believe I was allowed to watch this show! Still one of my favorites to just pop in or chill with when I stumble upon it on Chiller! It's a true soap classic!

About that same time as "Twin Peaks" I got into "Beverly Hills 90210" and then "Melrose Place", of course like it seemed everyone else was, and that led to my first full-on soap obsession "Dawson' CreeK"! I was like in high school when it debuted and I'd watch every episode of the first season over and over and over...It and "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer" (which I SO consider a soap) and "Popular" were the first three shows I just HAD to see and would go crazy over! They were the shows that led me online looking for other fans of, they also led me to "Sunset Beach", "Guiding Light", "Passions", and "Young And The Restless", as my daytime introductions...From there my obsession with British music led me to BBCAmerica's "EastEnders" and the Australian import "Neighbours" (which ran for like half a minute on Oxygen), currently just watching Y&R and the UK import "Hollyoaks" in five day a week format although there are SO many night-time shows that blur the soap genre that it's hard to say what is a soap and what isn't obviously! Some like "Footballer's Wive$" are CLEARLY soaps but others like "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost" and "Heroes"...what do you call them?

Kade

I wish SoapNet ran some of these. The few short-lived soaps they did pick were very odd and not very good. There was a not so soapy thing about a senator & his family which had a good cast but was very dull. They also had a dull show with Dana Delany, actually also a good cast but not much spark to it.

But none of these others I'd like to see.

AmericanLife ran Flamingo Road a few years ago but I could never get to the beginning so I could start watching it. They ran it together with Homefront but kept Homefront on a lot longer. Both gone now. They're running St. Elsewhere, Hill St. Blues and LA Law now instead.

I wonder if that AOL streaming service has any of these shows?

There were also Titans & Central Park West. As bad as Titans was I'd like to see it again all the way through. Same for Central Park West, but I don't remember if it was good or bad. I'd even buy those 2 on dvd if they were released. Same for Models, Inc. which I remember as having a great cast but awful writing.

There were also Titans & Central Park West. As bad as Titans was I'd like to see it again all the way through. Same for Central Park West, but I don't remember if it was good or bad. I'd even buy those 2 on dvd if they were released. Same for Models, Inc. which I remember as having a great cast but awful writing.

I LOVED "Central Park West" and I'd LOVE to see DVD's released...it came out here as a normal prime-time soap and the buzz was huge on it and then it flopped fast. CBS eventually re-tooled it as the out of control campy "CPW" but I liked it even more. The odd thing is that CBS never showed the last few episodes of the original (they aired in the UK) opting to jump ahead to the new "CPW" episodes. It was really good stuff with a great cast! John Barrowman, Mariel Hemingway, Madchen Amick, Lauren Hutton, and Raquel Welch were all in it! Australian Kylie Travis was my favorite (she played Rachel Dennis, the resident b***h of it all! Heard at the time the role was created for Kylie Minogue who turned it down due to commitments but omg that would have been heaven!), Michael Michelle (think that's her name) got her start on this one as well! Definitly needs to be DVD'd up!

Kade

I really loved "Titan"s and was so upset that it was canceled NBC though really never cared for it. Loved the cast and the stories were great. Casper van Dien and Yasmine Bleeth had awesome chemistry.

Robert

Flamingo Road

A true camp classic from 1981 starring Morgan Fairchild as a rich resident bitch down in Florida and youuuuuung Mark Harmon as her hubby who's soon looking for greener pastures.

Also starring David Selby, Howard Duff and John Beck.

I LOVE this show! I can go on and on for days and days about it. I watched the reruns every Monday night on AmericanLife TV (back when it was Goodlife), right after "Homefront." It was a weekly tradition, pretty much. Favorite characters were Constance, Lane, Fielding, Lute-Mae, and Skipper. Also thought Eudora was great as an emotionally unstable old psycho.

I think something that did the show in (besides being up against the monster known as "Hart to Hart") was the supernatural element that was introduced towards the end of the second season. Even before the voodoo stuff started to happen, the political plotlines of the second season were so damn complicated. I had to watch the entire run of the show twice in order to fully understand everything that was going on in the second season. The first season, IMO, was a bit better and I wish the show would have stuck to that formula, but still kept elements of the second season. I loved the Constance/Field/Lane triangle, that was some really great, campy [!@#$%^&*]. Constance's fake paralysis in the second season, along with her shacking up with Julio was great too. Loved Lane and Sam's wedding. I liked Skipper better with Christie in the first season than Alicia in the second season, but I liked their relationship a lot more after he went blind. Loved Eudora losing her mind, becoming addicted to pills, and getting institutionalized. Loved it when Lute-Mae was raped, but then she and Lane kicked her rapist's ass when they went camping. Loved Field getting drunk off his ass before a big campaign function. Loved how GODDAMN SEXY Mark Harmon was. I can pretty much go on and on about this show, I swear.

Unfortunately, I've never really gotten a chance to see a lot of the other 80s soaps. As far as short-lived shows are concerned, the only one (other than FR) that I've seen is "The Yellow Rose," but that was one episode, a loooooooooooooooong time ago. I watched "Dallas" here and there when I was younger and it was on TNN. I was much too young to really get it, though. I didn't get a chance to see any of the others at all until recently. I don't have SOAPnet, but there were times when I was at a relative's house or in the hospital when I'd catch some of the shows. I saw some "Knots Landing" episodes, like Sid's funeral, when Diana needed a kidney transplant, etc. I bought the first season of "Dynasty" on DVD and love it, can't wait for the second season to come out. Taped two episodes of "Falcon Crest" off of TVLand when they showed it as part of a marathon weekend in 2005 (along with the pilot episode of Knots and the episode of Dallas where JR gets shot), and I really liked them a lot. Wish someone would just suck it up and show all four of these shows. That's over 1100 episodes, combined, that are just sitting around. Besides "Dallas" on DVD and SOAPnet, none of them are given the respect that they deserve.

I watched "Melrose Place" reruns on the Style Network daily a couple of years ago. I really liked watching the marathons of the week's episodes on Saturday afternoons. I think my favorite seasons were two, three, and four. Amanda, Kimberly, Sydney, Jo, Jake, Michael, Billy, Alison, Jane...that's who I typically associate with MP. The first season was dull, but I still can enjoy it. Never really got a chance to see the later seasons (and all of the other characters like Taylor, Lexi, Brooke, Kyle, etc).

"Dawson's Creek" is one of my biggies, no doubt. Of course, the high school seasons (especially their junior and senior years) were better than the college seasons. I still maintain to this day that if I could fall in love with a TV character and spend the rest of my life with him, it'd be Jack McPhee. He's *exactly* what I like in a guy.

I wish they'd make more traditional-type primetime soaps. I love DH, and B&S is good, too, but I'd like to see something more melodramatic. I always thought Lifetime would make good shows like that, but I'm not really impressed by any of the stuff they're putting out...

I loved "Central Park West" when they retooled it! They brought in Raquel Welch and Lauren Hutton to be kind of like Alexis Colby and Krystle Carrington. Diana Brock and Collette Ferrier were their names I believe, and they hated each other. CPW took on a more Dynasty/Dallas/Melrose Place feel once it was retooled. Another one of Morgan Fairchild's shows was called "Paper Dolls", where she played "Racine" a.k.a. "Racy", a vixenish owner of a modeling agency. Does anyone remember another one on CBS called "2000 Malibu Road"? I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED that one! It was the story of four women (played by Lisa Hartman Black, Jennifer Beals, Drew Barrymore, and Tuesday Knight) sharing a beach house together while getting caught up in each others' messy lives. Hartman's character "Jade" was the owner of the beach house and I believe she was also a former prostitute. Beals' character was a lawyer, Barrymore's character was an aspiring actress I believe, and Knight's character played her quirky, overbearing sister. I don't know if anyone remembers this one in syndication: "Dangerous Women". It was very good as well, lots of camp, intrigue, melodrama, and even humor. It was the campy "women in prison" type of show that aired two back-to-back episodes once per week at night. Patricia/Faith, Cissie, Rita, Holly, Maria, and Crystal were the main women/inmates the show focused on.

Bernard Lechowick seems to have been involved with a show Hyperion Bay on the WB which may have been a soap.

There was also a soapy show with Vanessa Williams on UPN a year or 2 ago. South Beach? It was pretty good but I lost track about halfway through.

I think current shows: Brothers & Sisters, Lost and Desperate Housewives are a lot like soaps.

Wasn't Peyton Place originally a nighttime soap?