primetime soaps
May 20, 2009
- My final entry in this season's primetime scorecard (renewal for Castle and Better Off Ted; cancellation for The Unusals) is Privileged. I don't think I've written about Privlleged before, but I was really pulling for this show. Like the first season of Dirty Sexy Money, Privileged was a primetime soap about the filthy rich; but the storytelling was grounded in honest portrayals of the ...
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January 7, 2009
- Events of 2008 have had, and will continue to have, a profound impact on serialized TV drama, be it daytime or primetime. So, starting with the company that quite literally gave birth to daytime soaps, the 2008 scorecard: 1: Procter & Gamble morphs to TeleNext: For the first time in over 70 years, the P&G - actually PGP (Procter & Gamble Productions) - imprimatur does not appear ...
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October 27, 2008
- For a the past few years, primetime soaps have provided a real refuge for fans disenchanted with the current state of daytime soaps. In fact, some of us (mine are here and here) have been arguing that TPTB of daytime soaps would do well to take a good look at why. What I hadn't anticipated was that a primetime soap might emulate daytime's folly. But that seems to be what's happening with the ...
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June 2, 2008
- Twenty-five years after Hill Street Blues led to "TV's second golden age" (Steven Stark: Glue to the Set), a new incarnation of primetime soaps were introduced in the fall of 2006. In addition to Brothers and Sisters, ABC had Ugly Betty; NBC, the critics' darling, Friday Night Lights; all will be returning for third seasons in fall 2008. In many ways, these 21st-century primetime ...
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May 16, 2008
- For a long time now, I been arguing all over cyberspace that primetime soaps are doing a much better job of what daytime soaps used to: telling character-driven stories with intimacy, depth and complexity. But primetime isn’t daytime, and crime procedurals like Law & Order, CSI and Cold Case aren’t serials. In fact, exactly the opposite: one case; one episode. But many of these crime ...
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May 1, 2008
- I don't know why 1981 proved to be such a pivotal year for television. But the premiere of Hill Street Blues in January 1981 and the wedding of Luke and Laura on General Hospital that November marked the beginning of a profound shift for television programming, day and night. For primetime, the trajectory was up; In Glued to the Set, Steven Stark describes Hill Street as "pav(ing) the way ...
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