I thought i would start a topic about Canadian soap operas. There have not been many that i liked (there have been not that many to like) but there have been a few, i liked riverdale which in my opinion was one of the great ones(i watched the reruns at least 50 times)i have some tapes of it and still enjoy watching it. Riverdale was Canada's answer to coronation street but some of the characters were not as middle class as the characters on coronation street.

Another Canadian soap opera i like is paradise falls. This show is well you could say a guilty pleasure (it has a lot of nudity and bad language)this show also has a witch so you could say it is or answer to passions. I liked the first 1st season of paradise falls better then the 2nd season because in the second season it sort of lost it's roots and became more of a guilty pleasure but still a good show all around.

Another soap here in Canada i liked was strange paradise. This is in some sorts a spin-off of dark shadows, it does not focus on vampires and werewolves it focuses more on ghosts and witch craft. This is a really good show.It is a chessy show(it has over the top acting and special effects )but you have to laugh at it and enjoy it. I watched it as a kid but now that i finally have drive-in classics in my area(that is a Canadian digital channel that shows great old shows including strange paradise)i can finally watch it over again and really enjoy the cheesiness of the show. One of the writers of the show was Harding Lemay who wrote for Another World.

Do you have a Canadian soap opera that you like if so tell us about it!!!!!!

Canada doesnt have any programming of its own, let alone soaps.

But yes, Strange Paradise was very good. I've DVRed every Drive-In available episode (they dont have 165 and 171. these eps appear to be lost). The show was never as good as it was with the Maljardin Murders. Harding Lemay's tenure on SP was disastrous. He clearly didn't get the show, or know a thing about what had already happened. His Susan character was good. But the write out for Holly, the Phillip lookalike, rewriting everything in the final episode so that it was now Raxl who had been the evil on the show the whole time - bad. Especially the Raxl rewrite. Removed Jean Paul's danger factor, make no sense if you'd watched the first 65 episodes where she was trying to save him from the Mark of Death.

Strange Paradise has always looked like an interesting series to watch! Since Canada saw it popular enough to rerun, they should do a DVD release following the success of Dark Shadows. I would DEFINITELY pick it up!

I've always been interested in a Canadian soap from the early 1980s (I want to say 1983...) called "Loving Friends, Perfect Couples," which is considered the first "adult soap opera" because it regularly had nudity and bad language.

I just tuned into CBC and they have a new daytime soap on called north/south. It is about a bunch of people living in Halifax it seems OK and i am going to start watching it.

It airs three days a week after emmerdale!!

I just found this article on the show for anyone who is interested

http://www.thetelegram.com/news.aspx?storyID=50584

North/South is airing for 6 episodes on CBC, they are just trying to get into the soap biz by getting this show on the air to see how viewers will respond!!!

North/South is one of two soaps CBC is trying out another one is a show called 49th And Main which will air for 6 episodes the week after North/South as well just for a test, this soap is revolving around a new medical practice that opened it's doors in one of Vancouver's diverse neighborhoods.

I think it is good that canada is geting into the daytime soap biz finally and i hope these two soaps work out!!!!!

I wouldn't say Strange Paradise was bought because it was popular.

It has a cult following. Thats all, plus picked up some interest from those who had access to the channel and had seen Dark Shadows.

But it really has to do with the CRTC (our FCC). Canada has strict programming obligations. All channels must play atleast 30% canadian content in the day parts and 30% in primetime. And it frequently goes up when your licence is renewed. Its most often refered to as Cancon. Strange Paradise was bought on the cheap to fulfill DriveIn Classics Cancon requirement.

its why they also got The Hillarious House of Frightenstein.

I thought Harding Lemay did pretty good with "Strange Paradise". He may have rewritten some stuff, but the whole Desmondton scenario was a completely rewrite so that the show could be more of Canadian "Dark Shadows". The title "Strange Paradise" suggests the tropics not some small lumber town.

I've seen the premier episode of "High Hopes", a Canadian soap that was syndicated in the United States in the mid-1970s. The premier featured two SP alums, Colin Fox and Bruce Gray. Gray was the male lead Dr. Nathaniel "Neal" Chapman who was dealing with a teenage daughter Jessica and a mother who he was looking to move into a nursing home. Colin Fox played a lawyer friend of Neal's who he met up at a restaurant. Neal flirted with a television reporter Trudy Bowen and Jessica's friend Amy arrived and they talked about going over to see her boyfriend Michael. It wasn't bad, but it really wasn't anything that was really intriguing.

What? Canada has soaps?

Canada doesnt have any programming of its own, let alone soaps.

Umm..that's not true. "Corner Gas" is waay funnier than "Friends" ever was, IMO and "The Eleventh Hour" was one of my favourite shows for a while..then they cancelled it. I used to watch "Degrassi" and although I don't anymore, it is a show that is willing to go further than most American teens shows.

As for soaps..the only one I ever caught was "Riverdale" and it was kinda like "Coronation Street". However, I really didn't like the format and never could get into those types of soaps.

Umm..that's not true. "Corner Gas" is waay funnier than "Friends" ever was, IMO and "The Eleventh Hour" was one of my favourite shows for a while..then they cancelled it. I used to watch "Degrassi" and although I don't anymore, it is a show that is willing to go further than most American teens shows.

As for soaps..the only one I ever caught was "Riverdale" and it was kinda like "Coronation Street". However, I really didn't like the format and never could get into those types of soaps.

OMG I LOVED "The Eleventh Hour".

Canada "can" do good programming. There is a good show on CTV/Comedy called "Alice, I Think"...which is quirky/funny. Also, we've had really good teen programming in the past with Breaker High (which had ATWT's Terri Colombino) and Student Bodies (which had ex-B&Ber Jennifer Finnigan)

The problem is that no one really watches them because the networks schedule them in bad timeslots because they'd rather air reruns of CSI!

Whistler started the other month and its starting to pick up.

What? Canada has soaps?

see ... there ya go, confusin the yanks! No Ryan, we don't have soaps. As said, we barely have our on TV shows.

We had some soaps here and there. And we do have a government funded network devoted mainly to the mocking of the USA, it's called the CBC.

I thought Harding Lemay did pretty good with "Strange Paradise". He may have rewritten some stuff, but the whole Desmondton scenario was a completely rewrite so that the show could be more of Canadian "Dark Shadows". The title "Strange Paradise" suggests the tropics not some small lumber town.

The show's a mixed bag.

Of the show's two eras: Maljardain, and Desmonton, Desmonton had the better daily episodes and atmosphere. But the story stagnated for the bulk of the 7 months untill they knew they were cancelled at ep 195 and wrapped [!@#$%^&*] up. BUT, the Maljardain story was fantastic, and IMO the show never out did that month where Erica Desmond returned from the dead, killed everybody, and burned the island down.

Harding Lemay I was not impressed with. He did the ending, and that was pretty good - but that's not too hard to wrap up a storyline. I was disapointed he wrote out Holly Marshall. I found the two Phillip Desmond thing ridiculous. I wished he had included Irene Hatter I was very disapointed in what he did to Raxl in the end, as it made no freakin sense.

The show's a mixed bag.

Of the show's two eras: Maljardain, and Desmonton, Desmonton had the better daily episodes and atmosphere. But the story stagnated for the bulk of the 7 months untill they knew they were cancelled at ep 195 and wrapped [!@#$%^&*] up. BUT, the Maljardain story was fantastic, and IMO the show never out did that month where Erica Desmond returned from the dead, killed everybody, and burned the island down.

Harding Lemay I was not impressed with. He did the ending, and that was pretty good - but that's not too hard to wrap up a storyline. I was disapointed he wrote out Holly Marshall. I found the two Phillip Desmond thing ridiculous. I wished he had included Irene Hatter I was very disapointed in what he did to Raxl in the end, as it made no freakin sense.

I loved early Maljardin when creator Ian Martin was still writing. The plotting was shitty but the day to day episodes manage to be fascinating and even though nothing was happening there was a sense of movement. All the big mysteries where laid out early on and I felt they were moving towards a slow resolution with off shoots.

The Erica returns plot is good, but the show still seemed to have plot points that kind of would come in and come out. There was one episode where Alison talked about a vampire being lose and Raxl and Quito giving each other a look like there was some truth to it. The Erica plot also was another 'end' storyline. Costello came in as producer, fired writer Ian Martin, and within two weeks Tudi Wiggins arrived as Erica to revamp the show. For someone who was really into finding out 'how' Erica died, that was never really revealed, which I found disappointing. I've recently taken a class in college on ritual & myth theory and it seems that Ian Martin might have been creating a real literary landscape with Maljardin.

I found the early days of Desmondton exciting. Stuff actually happened! It was kind of shocking. But then stories seemed to fall to the wayside or go wacky. Cort is seeking revenge against his father but then it kinda isn't mentioned again. Emily announces she loves Jean Paul during one of his fits and then Helena pops up and theres that weird picture of all the women hanging in the past. WTF? And in the final episode I have Agatha Pruitt was killed off after only being introduced a few weeks earlier.

From there I've only seen the last seven weeks and I liked what I saw. Under Lemay, the show seemed to have a sense of pace that it never had before. Things didn't dangle and story possiibilities weren't dropped every few episodes.

Irene had a rich backstory that no one ever really seemed to want to use. Laslo's first wife story seemed so rushed that I assumed that Lemay planned on that being a bigger plot that would have involved Irene more.

Raxl made no sense, but I liked the flashback plot so much that I was willing to forgive making her some French villainess. I liked Trudy Young's Susan much more than I ever liked Sylvia Feigel's Holly Marshall. I really liked Susan & Philip. But to each their own.

I got the impression Laslo's wife backstory was there simply to provide an out for the Laslo character, which Lemay didn't know how to write for. Jan Campbell was amazing during the whole Ada / Laslo story.

I was sad they killed Agatha off. It seemed from the get-go she would be a temporary character. She was great fun when she was there.

The flashback plot made little sense to me. I enjoyed it on a scene by scene basis, but one moment Susan was Philipe's wife/lover/mistress, the next she was a star.

I know the vampire scene you're talking about. Alison makes a sarcastic comment about how Erica's blood got on her locket and got out of the cryo capsule. "Like a vampire in the night?!" with Alison's usual heavy sarcasm. To me, that seemed like a blatant Dark Shadows joke. The show was compared to it, a "rip off", and in alot of markets aired after it. Not something to be taken seriously. If one were to take it seriously, it came across to me as Raxl going "OMG! better flipping not be!"

Speaking of Alison, I always wonder how much better would SP have been had they not fired Dawn Greenhalgh. Jean-Paul and Alison had such amazing chemestry, where he had none with Emily. It woulda been ever better when Helena came along to play into the sibling rivalry aspect.

another Desmonton gripe was the lack of character development. We learned more about those Maljardin characters in those 3 months than we ever did in those other characters 8. Exceptions perhaps being Ada, and maybe Cort. And we got beautiful discussions of faith and religion, that were not preachy, but actually posed questions to our characters that they'd have to find answers to in their storylines.

OMG I LOVED "The Eleventh Hour".

Yeah, I think the show was screwed when the guy who played Dennis left but I liked that new character that came in so I'm still pissed about the cancellation.

Also, we've had really good teen programming in the past with Breaker High (which had ATWT's Terri Colombino) and Student Bodies (which had ex-B&Ber Jennifer Finnigan)

OMG...I LOVED "Breaker High"! Ryan Gosling was also on that show. Also, I started watching ATWT because I recognized TC (although the change from red to blonde hair kinda made it hard). I also used to watch "Student Bodies" and as a kid, I loved "Are You Afraid of the Dark?"

The problem is that no one really watches them because the networks schedule them in bad timeslots because they'd rather air reruns of CSI!

There's also a show called "Falcon Beach" but it seems to be too much of an OC copycat.