Strange Paradise

[te.]

Oh yeah, the pacing of the show is insane - they introduced a character who was going to kill herself and possibly be murdered by Jean Paul, then quickly moves into the Desmond Mansion via blackmail, is revealed to be a witch and then killed off. It all happens in ten or so episodes. There's really not room for a lot of character development, it's a shame that the last 65 episodes aren't available on YouTube (I've only found bootleg dvds via a sketchy site, but I'm not sure I want to spend 60+ dollars on those episodes) as Lemay would come in around episode 150 or so.

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

Are you saying Lemay's episodes are not generally available?  I did not know that.   Approximately how many episode did Lemay write for SP?  

[te.]

I think he wrote the last nine weeks out of 195 episodes, so I guess around 50-ish episodes.

 

Sadly, those are not uploaded (or has been deleted) on YouTube. They are available in the way that they've been aired in syndication and there are people selling bootleg dvds, they're just not currently on the internet.

[te.]

I'm towards the end of the second arc and Erica's lookalike Helena and Jean Paul are about to get married. Will it go off without a hitch? Dun-dun-DUUUN.

[te.]

I know no one is interested but I just randomly saw that the channel has started adding the episodes of the second (and last!) arc of Desmond Hall:

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[Mona Kane Croft]

 

Thank you.  Ive watched only a couple of episodes of this series, but was a huge fan of Dark Shadows.  Would you say Strange Paradise is as good as DS?  Or is it just a lesser imitation?   Serious question.  I'd love to hear how people feel about Strange Paradise, before I invest the time watching it.  Thanks!  

[te.]

Definitively an imitation. I also think if you enjoyed the spooks of DS you'd enjoy SP. How they do away with characters is kind of insane though; but I've only watched the first two arcs.

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

Okay, I'll find the eps and watch a few more.  Maybe I'll get hooked. Thank you!

 

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Neil Johnson

[te.]

https://www.youtube.com/user/strangeparadise69/playlists

 

Has the first two arcs and seems to be uploading the last arc.

[te.]

I've been re-watching the Maljardin arc because... well, no reason but I have nothing better to do.

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Honestly, the first 44 episodes with Ian Martin helming them kind of sucks. I know a lot of things were dropped (such as the flashbacks / alternative timeline which would've expanded Elizabeth's role on the show), but it's very repetitious and in itself very inconsistent in parts. I don't think Martin was a very good planner, especially for a soap opera. The show really does get a kick up its butt with episode 45, even if it was never going to become Shakespeare.

 

There are interesting bits that some fan blogs have compiled ( https://maljardinblog.wordpress.com/ ) - such as original outlines that got printed in magazines (which shows you how quick the turn-over was back then), like Erica was originally going to be revealed not to have died from eclampsia, but from plastic surgery after a car accident and trying to gain eternal youth. In Martin's original outline it seems likely that Erica would've never come back to life (which makes sense since they pretty much had women throwing themselves at the balding Colin Fox).

[Paul Raven]

By October 69 following awful ratings,the NY and LA stations dropped it and it was moved from evening to afternoon timeslots in other markets Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland and Detroit. It was announced that Robert Costello was taking over as exec producer.

Krantz Productions head Steve Krantz stated that the pace would quicken and the show would be 'beefed up and generally be better'

They took out a full page ad in Variety to announce Costello coming on board and pushed his Dark Shadows connection.

Incidentally Steve Krantz was hubby of 80's mega author Judith Krantz -"Scruples' 'Princess Daisy' etc

[dc11786]

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but I think part of the issue the show faced was it changed studios after 13 weeks when the show shifted from Maljardin to Desmond Hall. As a result, I believe some of the early markets who had bought the show would have run out of first-run episodes mid-December 1969 when the new studio didn't even open until January 1970. 

I haven't given it a good watch in many years, but the show can be fun at times. The early week (the first nine or so) are wildly uneven. All credited to Ian Martin, but clearly there were people ghostwriting as well because some scripts were marvelously witty and well constructed while others floundered. Some of the religious and medical discussions are interesting surrounding death. I know Martin was involved in early episodes of "The Doctors" so I imagine some of that tone came from there. 

The show also had abandoned most of its early projections (for the first 13 weeks) pretty late in the game as the projections for the unproduced episodes made their way into local papers. The show's past lives storyline set in the 17th century was originally intended to play out longer and would have seen Paisley Maxwell assume the dual role of the witch that she reminded Jacques Eloi des Mondes of.

The show is pretty crazy during the sequence with everyone getting offed in the final 3 or 4 weeks of the first cycle before the whole place ends up torched. 

The reboot helmed by Ron Sproat, like most periods on this show, also had some interesting story elements that were never completely developed. I liked the early iteration of Ada Thaxton as this battered and beaten woman who was desperately holding onto the past (clearly Elizabeth Stoddard) with Jack Creeley's flamboyant villain Lazlo Thaxton plotting with the village witch Irene Hatter (the underused Pat Moffatt). The local coven plotting against the wealthy Desmond clan had some potential, but alas nothing really came of that either.

The final run by Harding Lemay is as uneven as anything, but also a lot of fun, but I think that isn't a popular opinion among most of the show's fans. His past lives story was intriguing with Jacques and his bastard half-brother Phillipe and the Desmond curse. Of course, the revelation that devoted housekeeper Raxl was the source of all the family's woes was as left field as anything else the show produced. 

I'm glad it got a rerun a decade or so ago. 

[danfling]

I had not realized that Ian Martin had written scripts for The Doctors.

I did know that he was the coloborator of Henry Slesar when Mr. Slesar wrote Somerset.   (He also played Lyman the butler on that show.)  Their work on Somerset was excellent!

He is also listed as having been a writer for How to Survive a Marriage and One Life to Live. 

And he played Charley Brooks on The Edge of Night during that show's early years.

Edited February 1, 2023 by danfling

[Paul Raven]

He was also headwriter for Young Dr Malone

[DRW50]

A Strange Paradise episode is currently running on this channel.

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