With hope and a dash of contrarian good sense, this writer recently revisited the world of daytime soap opera, reasoning that like so much else in our postmodern culture--Las Vegas, fondue, Rob Lowe--afternoon dramas might have transitioned into hip. Little research was needed to prove this theory false. Sets still seem to draw their inspiration from the simulated Americana of a Holiday Inn lobby in Colonial Williamsburg. And on almost any given day, the chance of making it through the afternoon without hearing someone say, "I don't need any DNA test to prove that you're my son" or, maybe, "You slept with your daughter's husband, Olivia, so don't give me that I'm-so-devoted-to-my-children routine," remains as alarmingly low as the chance of making it through a whole episode of Friends without ever seeing Jennifer Aniston's navel.
That soaps have failed to evolve their formula for melodrama is surely one of the factors responsible for their diminished ratings. During the past five years, the number of women ages 18 to 49 who watch daytime dramas has declined 36%. Comparatively, the number in that group who watch prime-time network television has dropped 27%. Certainly women are more time-pressed than they were even a few years ago, and they are spending more of their spare time with cable TV and talk shows. But it could also be that their soap opera needs are being met elsewhere: not just on C-SPAN and Jerry Springer but on most nighttime dramas (and many sitcoms too), which now feature ongoing, relationship-focused story lines with will-they-or-won't-they cliff-hangers but, happily, very few incidents of amnesia.
There are currently 10 soaps on daytime TV, but a successful one has not been launched since CBS's debut of The Bold and the Beautiful in 1987. It might be considered an act of courage, then, that NBC, home of Sunset Beach, the lowest-rated soap on television, this week unleashes a lavish daytime drama, Passions. But soaps continue to be made and broadcast because, when all is said and done, they continue to generate a good deal of money--$50 million to $60 million a year for a successful one. NBC's new hour-long series, centered on four families and set in the fictitious New England seaside town of Harmony, runs right after the popular Days of Our Lives in most areas, replacing Another World, which went off the air last month after 35 years.
The network's main hope for Passions lies in the show's creator, James Reilly, a 50-year-old medical school dropout bestowed with the kind of outre imagination for which the world provides few professional outlets. A veteran daytime-drama writer, Reilly was brought to NBC to revive an ailing Days of Our Lives in 1992. During his five-year tenure as head writer, the show became the most-watched daytime soap on television among the genre's target audience of young and middle-aged women. It also became one of NBC's five most profitable shows in any time slot.
What Reilly brought to Days of Our Lives was story lines with paranormal elements, which makes sense, given that he claims to have once helped deliver a two-headed baby. Reilly had the show's heroine, Dr. Marlena Evans, undergo demonic possession followed by an an exorcism, all to impassioned audience response. In 1996 the network gave him free rein to begin creating something of his own.