Soaps for The Thinking Fan
By Patrick Erwin
On paper, The Bold and the Beautiful should be the most solid show on daytime. The show was created by daytime legend Bill Bell and taken over by his son Bradley when he retired. In an era in which shows seem to change creative teams with the change of seasons, Bradley Bell has been head writer and producer for well over a decade.
By Marlena De Lacroix
For the first hour of the Hallmark Channel’s Christmas movie The Note, I felt kind of bored and uncomfortable as Genie Francis played a frumpy (though definitely thinner) middle-aged newspaper columnist who seems to be in need of a stylish makeover or at least a spiked eggnog. Did I really want to watch a slow-paced Hallmark Christmas movie, all bathed in holy-ish holiday golden light, on a channel where there is no cleavage? [Read more...]
By Marlena De Lacroix
As I said in Part 1, an earlier post, the bravura scripts of One Life To Live‘s new head writer Ron Carlivati have made OLTL the soap to watch for thinking soap fans who enjoy sophisticated writing. Whether it’s because so many of other soaps are abysmal right now, or because we’re all so desperate for a soap to love, some journalists have jumped to deem OLTL the “Best Soap.” I’ve always made it a practice to watch a soap for a year before conferring such an accolade. Carlivati has been official headwriter for only three months!
By Patrick Erwin
My soap habit was initially formed, as many of our habits were, through hand-me-downs. My mother diligently watched Days of Our Lives, Search for Tomorrow and Another World. My sisters loved Young and the Restless and were part of General Hospital‘s Luke and Laura craze. Even my Guiding Light habit came from a neighbor who watched the show every day.
By Marlena De Lacroix
I have to admit I was very suspicious. Not more than two weeks after its new head writer Ron Carlivati’s debut, a soap reporter from the northern climes proclaimed One Life to Live the best soap of the year. As a veteran soap critic, I’ve always felt you had to watch a soap a couple of months at least before you declare a soap has improved and a watch about a year of it to deem it the “best.”
