How to create and write a soap, catering to soap opera fans?

Would you say it is "too late" to go back to the type of writing and acting that made the pre-1979 shows so memorable?

In a way, soaps have no choice but to go back to their roots, for lack of a better term. Budgets aren't anywhere near what they used to be. At the same time, though, once you've been trapped inside an underground city, or you've saved the world from being frozen, it's hard to come back.