Family Passions - more info?

[DRW50]

Sorry if there have been other threads or if this is in the wrong section, but I know very little about this show. A 2/1/94 Digest article mentions the show would be debuting that spring in Germany, Australia, Canda, Great Britian, with American distribution pending.

The show was about tension between two famiies in the automobile industry - the McDeeres of Canada and the Hallers of Germany. Gordon Thomson was Mathias Haller, a rich businessman, while Kin Shriner was Mickey Langer, an ex-con. The EP was Jorn Winther, who created the show with Pam Long.

There's an IMDB listing for the show, so I guess it did air somewhere. I've never seen this anywhere. Is any of it available? Apparently Hayden Christensen, Roscoe Born, Anders Hove, and Steven Jackson were also involved.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108844/

The SOD issue mentions Kathleen Noone, Nancy Lee Grahn, Robin Mattson, and Kim Zimmer. Noone said it didn't work out for her, Mattson said Shriner wanted her to do it but she couldn't, Zimmer's people said it wasn't true, and NLG said it wasn't true.

[Huntress]

"Family Passions" was shown on ZDF in Germany. The German title was "Macht der Leidenschaft" (literal translation: "Power of Passion"). I don't remember much about it, though.

[RogerNewcomb]

We interviewed Thom Racina a while back and he said this about it:

"I did this awful show in Toronto called FAMILY PASSIONS (1993) that was SO bad they aired it at 3 am. They should have packaged it as how not to do a soap opera. It would have made a lot of money."

http://www.welovesoaps.net/2010/01/talkin-with-thom-racina-wls-interview_04.html

[DRW50]

Thanks. That's fascinating. If you ever interview him again I'd love to hear more. I know he was on Brandon's Buzz Radio a few times, not sure if he talked about it.

[RogerNewcomb]

We see him a lot so I'll ask him next time.

[Matt]

I've never heard Thom say ONE nice thing about "Family Passions". In fact, he often credits it for being the single experience that drove him away from the entire genre for YEARS. He has said, though, that it turned out to be a good thing in the end because it was after the bad FP experience that he returned to writing novels where he's had quite a bit of success.