Favorite Failed Primetime Soap

Central Park West (CBS 1995)

Dark Shadows, of course!

There was a Southern-based one that had the hottest guys - I can’t remember the name. Maybe Savannah?

Yes, and George Eads was to die for. But it ran two seasons.

I still remember this TV spot

I don’t remember Four Corners at all — I must’ve totally missed it. I did love Savannah.

I don’t remember Four Corners at all - I must’ve totally missed it. I liked Yellow Rose. I loved Flamingo Road. I also loved Savannah.

Pasadena and Malibu Shores

Paper Dolls had the best opening.

I loved Secrets of Midland Heights/Kings Crossing — probably because of Michael Zaslow.

Fresno!

Central Park West.

Beacon Hill

[quote]I'm defining failed as lasting one season or less on a major network in primetime.

I was going to comment that Dark Shadows was on much longer than a year, but I see now (after I voted) that you've noted the 1991 series. You should have called it "Dark Shadows: The Revival", as that is what it was known as.

2000 Malibu Road

I voted for Midland Shores, but my first choice is Pasadena. I also liked one with Malibu in the title. Greg Vaughan's character said something in one scene about perfume being as nasty as cigarette smoke. I wanted to watch the show forever after that.

Does Flamingo Road count?

Savannah in 1996

Hidden Palms, with my imaginary boyfriend Michael Cassidy.

Suits.

Suits ran for 492 seasons.

I liked Secrets of Midland Heights. I think I was in 9th grade and I recall Linda Hamilton.

Titans with Yasmine Bleeth, Victoria Principal, and Casper Van Dien.

Pasadena.

Kings Crossing had the snazziest theme song.

(By Jerrold Immel, who also did Dallas and Knots Landing.)

2000 Malibu Road was soap perfection. Blame Drew for nixing more. I mean, she certainly did just fine but oh what could have been.

Royal Bay

Titans. Aired 2000-2001. I liked Kevin Zegers (he’s my age) and Jack Wagner.

Kings (2009; NBC)

King's Crossing was certain the classiest! Mary Frann, Marilyn (Bridget Nylund) Jones, Linda Hamilton and Oscar winner Beatrice Straight in a "role only she could play!"

R11, thank you for the Fresno post. A fine send-up of the genre, best watched WITHOUT the laugh track that was bizarrely added at a later date.

Voting with some others, Central park West was good in its first season and man, Savannah was a hoot when it started!

Berrengers

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Neither primetime nor failed, R32.

Kings Crossing was basically a retooling of Secrets of Midland Heights after its spectacular flop. Kings fared no better. I liked Secrets best because I was a tween gayling at the time and thought it was a "kids" soap (unless Dallas or Knots) and had a pretty hot cast. It was closer in the theme to Peyton Place, also about a small town that focused on the younger set. The role of Oscar-winner Beatrice Straight was previously played by Martha Scott who was wonderful at chewing the scenery as the matriarch villainess. Had a huge crush on (the still unmarried) Jim Youngs...

Pacific P. With Lucky V.

R27 Kevin Zegers was sexy and extremely fuckable. I would have paired up with him in the Dawn of the Dead mall.

R34 Me too! I loved it. That was the first tv season the networks were really copying Dallas and Knots…taking a throwing a lot at the wall approach.

I lived in Italy in much of the 1980s and some of the 1990s. I liked Flamingo Road. My family and I would watch together. Morgan Fairchild was very popular in Italy. I liked Mark Harmon and Woody Brown. I liked Fernando Allende also but I preferred the classic American look more. The men on Flamingo Road were mostly smooth (not Harmon) and often had their shirts off. I had never seen an upper body like Woody Brown’s before. I don’t know what happened to him but he did turn up with a substantial part as one of Jodie Foster’s rapists in The Accused.

My mother was American and loved movies and said the tv story setup was more like Written on the Wind than Flamingo Road.

Also, Mark Harmon was very attractive.

Woody Brown was a hot piece.

He showed up in some After Dark pictorials before his brief claim to fame on Flamingo Road.

Big hair, big tits, had an expression that suggested he'd suck a cock or ten to get a network gig. Wonder why he flamed out?

FLAMINGO ROAD.

R40 He looks like an updated (to 1980) version of the birthday present / hustler in Boys in the Band.

2000 Malibu Road. Aaron Spelling, Terry Louise Fisher and Joel Schumaker AND Drew Barrymore? How did it fail?

OMG that show had everything. Jennifer Beals, Lisa Hartman and Drew Barrymore as roommates with Tuesday Knight as the fat sister to Drew Barrymore! Hot guys like Brian Bloom and Michael T Weiss. I am guessing those two pounded each other.

^ Don't forget Michael T. Weiss

r45 I didn't

I liked FLAMINGO ROAD because it had John Beck, Woody Brown and Fernando Allende who played Morgan Fairchild’s hot Cuban side piece. I used to include Mark Harmon but my attraction to him is quite mystifying to me now.

R47 I personally do not find your attraction to Mark Harmon mystifying. He had a great face and a well defined furry body, and was overall a hot piece of ass for a brief period of time. But as we got to know him better, he just got worse like in the insufferable movies he made he is very very dull and it makes sense that his wife is the very very dull Pam Dawber.

2000 Malibu Road's fat sister called everybody 'honey bunny' and schemed to fuck the other dude from As The World Turns that wasn't the hot one that I certainly hope fucked Michael T Weiss, but she had what I can only describe as Peak Evil Frau as her whole vibe.

Ah, the summer of '92..

r49 and she got struck by lightning in the cliff hanger!

I mean - come on. Look at this cast. Rumor has it Aaron was no so keen on it because CBS aired it right up against Melrose Place.

I voted for Yellow Rose because I really did love it and Sam Elliott's+Cybill Shepeard's beauty and chemistry, BUT

If were in your poll, OP, I'd have voted for Berringer's. Some legit good actors having fun and shamelessly chewing ALL the scenery. Plus the ever-delicious Ben Murphy, Art Hindle, luscious Anita Morris, and seriously sexy daddy Sam Wanamaker.

No one for Bare Essence?!

R52 - That was my bad. I kept trying to remember the name of the department store soap with Sam Wannamaker but couldn't think of it, and for some reason thought it was called Tattingers. So I listed that as a dramedy exclusion. But I would have listed it. Unfortunately, the poll only allows for nine choices plus "other"...

[quote] I don’t remember Four Corners at all

It came and went lickety-split. Maybe 4 episodes aired? But it was from the same guy (the recently deceased queen, David Jacobs, who also brought us Dallas and Knots Landing), plus it had a gay icons Ann-Margret and Sonia Braga as the two leads. Plenty of hot boys abounded, but my personal favorite was a still youngish Doug Wert from One Life to Live. Bless his heart, he tried to come off as straight.

R53 - I meant to include Bare Essence, but Jessica Walter threatened to cut my heart out with a shrimp fork...

Berrenger's.

With GOWNS BY TRAVILLA. (For three episodes.)

I vaguely recall Secrets of Midland Heights. Did we ever find out the secrets?

Wasn't there a Steven Weber show where he's the patriarch of the most influential family in town? Maybe it was a mystery, not a soap. I don't think it lasted long.

Good Christian Bitches lasted only one season, which was a shame.

I really wanted to like GCB but just couldn't get into it. It's like it had all the right elements but together wrong. It certainly had potential though, and Chenoweth was game for playing a good ol' Southern princess cunt.

[quote] I vaguely recall Secrets of Midland Heights. Did we ever find out the secrets?

No one had the time to!

R44 My friend worked on a movie called Mistress a very long time ago with a pre Malibu Road Tuesday Knight. My friend got to be good friends with her for a while and had nothing but nice things to say about her. She had a huge build up around that time and everybody thought 2000 Malibu Road was going to propel her into the stratosphere but instead she ended up sinking down to (and amassing a huge number of both small and leading roles) bottom of the barrel straight to video and, now, end-of-the-list streamers.

Bare Essence and Berrenger's. Bare Essence is tops though. Had a great case and I was really pulling for Genie to have a hit. Too bad they didn't move her to Dynasty or something like that.

R62 - Genie was going to the new Fallon, but Aaron Spelling refused her cocaine line item in the budget so they brought me in. I owe my whole career to Genie's bad choices.

An episode of Bare Essence. Whoever the stylists were, wardrobe and everything else, seemed to really love Genie. They knew what they were doing. She never looked better. Johnathan Frakes was so hot when he was young.

Central Park West, mainly for the hot, well-hung Brit who came out later as an insatiable bottom. Can't remember his name but he's still hot.

And also because they played Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack in a bedroom scene.

r65 Do you mean John Barrowman? Scottish, not brittish :D

That's him, r66. He let his hair go white for a while but he's dyeing it brown again now. Still looks good.

EMERALD POINT was terrible. Even with Sela Ward in it.

Yes, but dear Lord -- think of the men in uniform!!!

That 2000 Malibu Road finale cliffhanger was insane.

Tuesday Knight (my fave on the show) became a scream queen.

How do so many of you remember 2000 Malibu Road when it ran for four weeks in late summer 1992?

I was 16 and watched everything on TV back then, and even I had better things to do.

I was 23 and remember watching it, and being pissed that it didn't get renewed.

Episodes 1 & 2 (not great quality).

Does American Gothic count as a soap?

r73 - I suppose it could since the stories were continuing and it had soapy elements like revenge and secret love affairs. I really like American Gothic. It was like Twin Peaks with a plotline or Dark Shadows written by an adult.

[quote]Titans with Yasmine Bleeth, Victoria Principal, and Casper Van Dien.

And John Barrowman.

I remember Yasmine, Casper, and Barrowman did a joint interview to promote the series for some magazine and took a couple of photos, including this one that I used to jerk off to a lot as a teen. Lucky bitch! 😂

R75 - Sadly, they were more a pair of runts than Titans.

Eldorado, BBC 1992

Soap fun in the sun, entire village set built out in Spain at a cost of millions, lasted a year.

Any votes for Young Americans starring a young Ian Somerhalder and Kate Bosworth?

Guest appearances by Matt Czuchry, Charlie Hunnam and Michell Monaghan.

My fiends and I were so disappointed when it didn't get picked up for a full season run.

Of those listed in OP, Models Inc (she always had great nails!), Paper Dolls and 2000 Malibu get my votes.

R59 100% and Mark Deklin (sp.?) was a hot piece of mature ass.

R65 R66 R67 The more one gets to know Barrowman, the less one likes Barrowman.

He was hot in magazine spreads, still hot on TV with the volume on mute—unmute and he becomes less hot, and in person he is a hyper motor mouth queen with roving hands and stale win/ cigarette breath—and he thinks he is still 28.

Nothing's wrong with being fifty... unless you're acting twenty!

The clothes Barrowman is wearing at r62's link = dubious, and the shoes are a serious turn-off, but his face is still gorgeous.

I don't follow him closely. Just know he's hot, hung and a bottom.

I'll a nighttime soap title to the many added that are part of OP's list. I enjoyed this program, thought the premise was interesting and well-executed early, but when a program has to add Carmen Electra for, I don't know, "spice", I think the writers were flailing and the network making behind-the scenes demands... still Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Dylan Neal? My, my, my.

Hyperion Bay!

There was a pilot called The Colony, written by Richard and Esther Shapiro my friend was in. It never got picked up but was run as a movie of the week. It has a lot of the same people in all these other ones,

God... did even bother to proof before posting?

Original sentence: I'll a nighttime soap title to the many added that are part of OP's list.

I should have typed: I'll add a nighttime soap title to the many added that are not part of OP's list.

geez...

I heat itis whan peeple coract they're tiepoes,