- Awards
- 15
It's hard to explain why these nighttime soap efforts mostly didn't work in the '70s.
First of all, you need a cast that the viewer will "like" -- and that's tricky and mysterious. (Leonard Katzman said that no matter how well-written a show, it won't work if the audience doesn't like the cast).
But there was something about the tired, ugly zeitgeist of the '70s (which I rather liked) that might have helped the flavor or subtext of these shows creatively yet offput the audience. Some of the corrupt business and political goings on had a cold, high-society believability (that DALLAS and DYNASTY later lacked), but in a late-stage Vietnam, Watergate era, the public was kind of disinterested. Even when these entries were good-ish.
I mean, when you saw the ads and promos for these '70s nighttime soap attempts, you knew that didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it -- especially the weekly series... The people wanted screaming sitcoms and gimmicky, personality-driven cop shows.
Why did DALLAS break through by the end of the decade when these '70s efforts didn't (although some of the mini-series got decent numbers)? Maybe the time was right, the cast was right, we were getting far enough away from the byzantine cultural stuff of the '60s that the viewer was finally willing to roll with it -- and perhaps DALLAS was the right one.
In fact, DALLAS and DYNASTY probably wouldn't have worked in the '80s if they didn't have their genesis in the dusts of the '70s (yes, the DYNASTY pilot and much of its first season were shot in 1980, but 1980 was really the last year of the '70s.... It really, really was).
Technically, 1969:
First of all, you need a cast that the viewer will "like" -- and that's tricky and mysterious. (Leonard Katzman said that no matter how well-written a show, it won't work if the audience doesn't like the cast).
But there was something about the tired, ugly zeitgeist of the '70s (which I rather liked) that might have helped the flavor or subtext of these shows creatively yet offput the audience. Some of the corrupt business and political goings on had a cold, high-society believability (that DALLAS and DYNASTY later lacked), but in a late-stage Vietnam, Watergate era, the public was kind of disinterested. Even when these entries were good-ish.
I mean, when you saw the ads and promos for these '70s nighttime soap attempts, you knew that didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it -- especially the weekly series... The people wanted screaming sitcoms and gimmicky, personality-driven cop shows.
Why did DALLAS break through by the end of the decade when these '70s efforts didn't (although some of the mini-series got decent numbers)? Maybe the time was right, the cast was right, we were getting far enough away from the byzantine cultural stuff of the '60s that the viewer was finally willing to roll with it -- and perhaps DALLAS was the right one.
In fact, DALLAS and DYNASTY probably wouldn't have worked in the '80s if they didn't have their genesis in the dusts of the '70s (yes, the DYNASTY pilot and much of its first season were shot in 1980, but 1980 was really the last year of the '70s.... It really, really was).
Technically, 1969: