Primetime Soaps

[Contessa Donatella]

Pasadena has now joined my Primetime Soaps Channel. 

https://rumble.com/c/c-6735237

It followed Flamingo Road, Paper Dolls, Once & Again, The Monroes ... 

[Forever8]

Another channel on YouTube has uploaded some unaired soap/drama pilots, including

 

Southern Comfort 2006 (Fox), which would've starred Madeleine Stowe and Eric Roberts about a wife taking over her husband's business when he's sent to jail. 

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Grace (2011) ABC which would've starred Eric Roberts, Abigail Spencer, Sherri Saum, and Debbie Allen about a famous dancer and choreographer who has three children with three women. 

 

Football Wives (2007) (ABC), which is a loose remake of the ITV show Footballers Wives, which would've starred Lucy Lawless, Gabrielle Union, and Kiele Sanchez. 

 

The Way (The CW) 2006, which would've starred Andrew McCarthy, Jane Alexander, Julia Ormond, and Peter Strauss about a family of witches living in New England. 

 

 

And being reuploaded is the Practical Magical TV pilot Sudbury for CBS from 2004, which would've starred Kim Delaney, Jeri Ryan, Kat Dennings, Esai Morales, Shirley Knight, and Dixie Carter. I thought it had potential, but CBS was not the right network for it. I could've seen it on The WB, Fox, or even ABC. 

 

[j swift]

The original Footballers Wives is one of my favorites.  And it would've translated well overseas.  But by 2007, it was already out of date, and they could not tell the same outrageous stories in post-Jackson/Timberlake Superbowl culture.  One more thing ruined by Justin…

[DRW50]

A number of those pilots were originally uploaded by the Media Garage account, which was removed several times for the usual reasons. They are going to put up some new pilots, they claim - hopefully there will be some primetime soap related material.

I watched Grace on their channel. It's too slick in the way many Shondaland shows are for me but had potential, and a good cast.

[Chris B]

That Football Wives pilot was cute, but I think had it made it to series, it would've been heavily watered down. If anything, they'd have to do that on streaming or cable to match the dark wit of the original series.

[soapfan770]

I know we discussed that Michael Filerman’s King’s Crossing was basically a Falcon Crest clone, and you can tell even in these opening credits (I would’ve loved to see Beatrice Straight more on primetime soaps). That said, the theme music is TERRIBLE though and the credit font feels more like a sitcom. 
 

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[te.]

I've mentioned it before, but I loathe when they use shots of people "talking" in opening credits. It just comes across as lazy - how hard is it to dig up an alternative take of someone's reaction shot? 

I don't think any episodes of King's Crossing or the previous incarnation Secrets of Midland Heights have ever turned up online. 

ETA:

The opening credits to Secrets of Midland Heights is here, starting at 6:01:

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Edited December 15, 2024 by te.

[Paul Raven]

The Kings Crossing credits are so unimaginative.

A few poorly chosen clips (agree about the talking) and some background shots against dreary music.

As generic as can be. Hardly gets the viewer involved.

 

[soapfan770]

Just terrible. I’m surprised that Lorimar let those credits fly like that compared to their other shows. 

The 1/12-1/18/81 ratings for Midland Heights, airing at 10PM on Saturdays on CBS had it at #65 out of 67 shows that week. Ouch!

Meanwhile King’s Crossing aired on ABC Saturday nights in January & February 1982 at 8PM leading into the Love Boat & Fantasy Island, both still Top 30 shows. It flopped, season ranking was #79 out of 105. Its replacement show in the same slot was, TJ Hooker which was a hit right out of the gate and also a Top 30 show for the 81-82 season.

Obviously King’s Crossing’s being a flop didn’t affect either career or Mary Frann or Linda Hamilton. Poor Doran Clark though, who was cast in starring Roland in one short lived primetime  soap one after the other throughout the 80’s (Midland Heights, Kings Crossing, Emerald Point, Nightingales) before her career just fizzled out.

[Chris 2]

The pilot for “King’s Crossing” had a lightly classical-sounding theme. Then they went with something more bombastic from Jerrold Immel (“Dallas”, “Knots Landing”) for the series.

Marilyn Jones was very appealing and Linda Hamilton was at the height of her beauty. Mary Frann’s hair needed a blow dryer.

But Beatrice Straight was the best thing about the series. Too bad Lorimar didn’t use her in one of its successful soaps. 

You can hear the pilot theme running in the background of this promo.
 

https://youtu.be/LW-aFHKoPuY?si=8xLpoEYaFA3k4M_U

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[kalbir]

Lorimar had four short-lived primetime soaps in the 1980s.

Secrets of Midland Heights (CBS December 6, 1980-January 24, 1981): 7 episodes

Flamingo Road (NBC January 6, 1981-May 4, 1982): 37 episodes

King's Crossing (ABC January 16-February 27, 1982): 7 episodes

Berrenger's (NBC January 5-March 9, 1985): 12 episodes

[te.]

That house looks very familiar - at first I thought it might've been the Falcon Crest mansion, but there's not the brick details. Now I'm curious where they filmed. 

[Soaplovers]

It seemed as though King's Crossing was less a soap and more of a family drama.  Perhaps another night on ABC's schedule would have been better for the show since it seemed to be aimed at teen viewers.

[All My Shadows]

I’ve always adored the King’s Crossing theme

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but when I finally saw the accompanying sequence, I bristled. For one, the show does not seem to fit the theme at allllllll - as has been said many times, this just doesn’t seem like a Lorimar soap in the vein of the others at all. No glamor, no opulence, etc, and the music has a certain stylish quality. And then also, they just threw together the most generic credits sequence they could have ever come up with. No interesting graphics to fit in with Dallas’s sliding images of Texas into the three-panel frames of the cast, Knots’s overhead shot of the cul-de-sac or the scrolling clips, or Flamingo Road’s tinted footage of flamingos. Even when FC just kept it simple with the headshots alternating with landscapes, it was effective. And all three of those shows had the title presented alongside a crescendo in the music - King’s Crossing’s theme has the perfect moment for that at about the 20-second mark, but no, let’s just throw it out there at the very beginning.

[Jagger1966]

One thing I always found interesting was that all four of the actors who made the jump from Secrets Of Midland Heights to King's Crossing ended up guest starring on Murder, She Wrote (but who in Hollywood didn't?)  Doran Clark and Marilyn Jones did 3 episodes each while Linda Hamilton and Daniel Zippi each did one (Zippi was in the pilot but his part was basically a cameo as a mailman).