I used to like a bit of 1993 Days of our Lives but I watched an episode a couple of days ago and it was so bad.

The sets are all so obviously indoors, and in one scene I saw a mic dangling above the characters' heads. Neighbours is slated for its production standards but it looks like a Hollywood movie compared to DOOL. Home and Away in comparison, looks much more slick and realistic, even if the writing is poor a lot of the time.

They're daytime shows so their budgets would only be a fraction of what H&A and Neighbours are made for. Also, they've had their budgets pared down in recent years in order to survive. Of the US soaps that I've seen, Days was always the one that looked most artificial. It's like they never moved away from the old style of recording everythIng, including outdoor scenes, on sound stages. The Bold and the Beautiful may not be great but it at least uses location filming on occasion.

Probably because all the best writing talent, up and coming actors and funding goes to all the US dramas such as Game of Thrones, Westworld, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead etc. US Soaps are perceived as nothing more than light daytime fluff over there, so it's understandable that all the best talent and funding will go elsewhere. The US drama industry has a lot more opportunities for people, unlike the UK.

There was probably a time when US soaps were considered to be good TV (my sister claims they use to be good in the old days), but I think those days are long gone now and US TV has moved on from soaps.

In the UK, we treat our soaps as serious evening dramas and thery're very much a part of British culture (certainly Corrie and EE). Corrie and EE are considered flagship shows for the BBC and ITV, that is not the case for US soaps and none of them are comparable to the big US dramas that I listed above. Our soaps seem to be more adequately funded for this reason too because our broadcasters perceive them to be vital to their daily programming.

UK soap writers aren't exactly the most talented either, but they seem to put more effort into their (frankly repetitive) storylining and there's simply more of a gritty quality in the settings, characters, storylines and filming quality in the UK soaps. Soaps aren't meant to be like movies and that's where I think the US go wrong because their larger-than-life style fits with movies and large scale TV dramas.

Also we don't have great dramas like Games of Thrones and Breaking Bad, sure we can produce a half decent show like Luther and Sherlock, but we simply don't have the money to produce our own dramas of that scale and quality. So the BBC and ITV are able to focus on spending money on soaps a lot more.

There's probably other reasons too. But I'd say that's about the gist of it.

Home and Away has the best sets and lighting out of any soap. That combined with its scenery make it look amazing visually

I haven't watched any of the daytime soaps since the late 90s (Sunset Beach which made a virtue of its crapness) so have no idea what they're like now but my first response is pace of production and lack of money.

They make 5 hours (less adverts) of tv-every week - that's a huge volume to write, act, direct and can only be done like a conveyer belt using multi camera and little or no time for retakes. It's actually amazing more mistakes don't get through.

Consider that it is double the output of the UK soaps and more than double the Australian ones as they go off air December.

Re the look of it, the Uk and Oz soaps immediately look better because they're not internnal studio bound which can't help look a bit cheap. Even those which are sets, but purpose built ones like EE, HO and Corrie benefit and H&A and Emmerdale have a huge advantage with the beauty of their natural landscapes - the ocean, beach and moors.

Worth noting of course that the prime time soaps like Dynasty, Dallas, Knots Landing and more recent equivelents like Revenge or Desperate Housewives have very high budgets and are very slick and not just in how they look. I'd argue that Knots Landing was about the best written drama, not just soap but drama, America produced in the mid 80s rivalled only by Hill Street Blues.

The budget for the US daytime soaps is nothing like that for other forms of dramas, plus the daytime soap are entirely studio based, which limits what they can do. The US daytime soaps are almost entirely emotion and no action -- characters even have to soliloquise to move stories on because of the lack of action showing events moving. With other dramas and UK soaps, there's a better balance.

In general the US soaps have become bad because of bad writing and the networks hiring producers and writers that have failed on another soap. Like for example Chuck Pratt was All My Children's head writer the its last few years on the air, he is credited with putting the final nail if it's coffin yet The Young and The Restless hired him to be head writer and executive producer and not so shockingly he destroyed Y&R too. And Pratt isn't the only case of this Jill Farren Phelps, Megan McTavish and Dina Higley have all bounced from soap to soap leaving each soap they worked at decimated.

Now with Days specifically NBC has slashed their budget year after year which is why the production looks so bad, with the other 3 remaining soaps their production values are still pretty decent.

Now I do have some hope for the soaps, The Young and the Restless hired former EastEnders producer Mal Young as EP and he has brought back creator Bill Bell's protege Sally Susman Morina as head writer so for the first time in years I think one of the soaps is moving in the right direction.

Thanks for all your insightful posts.

Has Days of our Lives ever done location filming? Or never? And also, do the other US soaps? Or did they ever?

All the soaps used to to do location filming, they would travel all over the world, this was back in the 80's though when the soaps were at the height of their popularity and making money hand over fist. I read somewhere that in the 80's General Hospital was making so much money for ABC it was paying to cover the production costs of Dynasty.

Santa Barbara filmed in Paris but that was mainly because it was very popular there, similar to how both Neighbours and H£A have filmed in Britain.

Closer to home, both Santa Barbara and Sunset Beach had limited beach work as they were based in coastal towns.

All the night time soaps did, Dallas in Dallas for the 6 weeks each season, KL on the cul de sac and beach etc.

They have always been the same. The great spoof 'soap' was so funny. Sunset Beach had me in stitches. They are not supposed to be real as ours are. People often say how depressing Eastenders is. In US soaps there can be the supernatural and the villains never seem to die. They are supposed to be fun. Many US actors view daytime as the day job while they wait for films etc. James Franco was on General Hospital I think. They don't see it as a climb down as our actors do. Jensen Ackles was on Days and that girl on Heroes was on a soap. The list goes on.

When I was living in the US, it seemed like most viewed soaps as a guilty pleasure and not taken very seriously.

Good points there. I would add in a more recent example too - Empire, which is a hybrid of a music drama and a family soap opera with some crime thrown in. They were getting massive ratings in the US last time I checked and has a big budget. In fact it was there highest-rated drama for years. So it shows soap operas can work as prime time dramas in the US.

Its such a shame US viewers didnt take to sunset beach as it was so different to their other bland soaps. Its probably why sunset beach was the only daytime soap to be successful in the UK. With its location filming and not taking itself too seriously it was an enjoyable hour.

I always wondered why ITV picked Santa Barbara in 1987 for their new morning line up. It had already been running three years and they they split the episodes into half hours. The bold and the beautiful had started earlier in 1987 and was a half hour programme. Had ITV got that for daytime who knows it may have been a daytime hit.

I don't know, I live in the USA but I don't watch any soaps. Except of course EE ( online)

I used to work with a few ladies who were passionate about the Young & the Restless. It is not considered prime tv by most folk.

I remember Knot's s Landing when it was just about Karen, Val, Gary and their daily lives in a upper working class/ lower middle class suburb. Even though Gary's s were the multi- millionaire Ewings, he had left all that behind and settled down with Val. They were just everyday people.Then all of a sudden Karen, who was a stay-at- home Mum, became a high powered businesswoman and Val was an internationally best selling authorIt got silly after that. Now there's s wrong with Karen becoming a businesswoman and Val a writer, but it was the level of success they both achieved ( and I only a few years) that seemed very ' soapy.'

The Bold and the Beautiful is the most watched soap in the world so it's done location shooting in some of the countries that it's most popular in like Italy and Australia. In terms of more local outdoor scenes, they sometimes shoot scenes in the CBS studios lot which is supposed to be the outside of Forrester Creations and they've done some beach scenes in what I think is supposed to be Malibu. In contrast, I don't ever recall seeing an outdoor scene on it's sister soap The Young and the Restless although their fake outdoor sets are a lot more realistic than Days.


I'm guessing that Santa Barbara was cheap to buy. It wasn't a ratings hit in the US, yet it aired all over the world so I'd say it was sold cheap and picked up by a lot of international networks to use as cheap filler in their daytime schedules.

One bad episode of a one soap doesn't automatically mean all US soaps are bad?

However, Days of our lives is rubbish imo. All the US soaps have low budgets but Day's low budget is much more evident. It's at the bottom of the ratings. It's stories are crap. There are some great actors on there being wasted. It is utterly unwatchable.

General Hospital and The Young and The Restless are fantastic imo. General Hospital does go for the sensationalism route, while Young and the restless is slightly more down to earth-ish. But i am a newish viewer so i am going by nearly a year's worth of episode, compared to someone like Mark who has been watching these shows for a long time.

The Bold and The Beautiful has it's moments but it needs a good revamp. The show's storylines are either about love triangles or will they or won't theys. Nearly every character has slept or married or had a child with someone in that show. It's marvelous. They really do take that expression "keeping it in the family" to a whole new level in this show. The main issue with this show is that unlike all the other soaps, BB never updated it's format to 40 minutes (1 hour with commercials) and it has a very small cast. So the show can be very claustrophobic within it's cast but with the small running time, it does avoid drawn out scenes and wraps it's storylines up quickly

NBC should cancel Days and launch a new soap with a higher budget and good writers. Viewers may be drawn to a brand new soap where there are not thirty years of stories to catch up on. It would also sell better outside the US as again it would be a new series.

That is not true, the soaps were all realistic until the 80's. When Gloria Monty took over as EP of General Hospital she introduced the idea of the super couple with Luke and Laura and had them in the big adventure stories where they were saving the world, that proved to be extremely popular giving GH record high ratings and when the other soaps saw that they copied the format. But even with that there were still some like All My Children that remained reality based.



Sunset Beach was not different, originally it was basically a daytime version of Melrose Place and when that didnt' work NBC had Days of Our Lives then head writer Jim Riley basically turn it into another Days of Our Lives with the over the top stories.


I read an interview with Donna Mills a few years ago and she said that she had gone to creator David Jacobs and told him that people didn't want to come home from work and watch people work at a Ford dealership.


I think all the US soaps are in a bad state, but Y&R will hopefully pick up next week when Sally Susman Morina's stories start airing. After reading her interview she really understands what Y&R is supposed to be and I think she will be able to return it to its former glory.

I'd imagine it was because Santa Barbara had the best critical reputation, winning Daytime Emmys and good reviews from magazines like Soap Opera Digest.

Cutting it down to half hour slots and then only twice a week just killed it though as it made it so slow.

To be fair a lot of the change of direction did evolve organically from 2 things - Gary inheriting millions from Jock and investing it in his friends/neighbours businesses and Karen meeting and marrying Mack who as a lawyer had connections to thw rich and powerful in Politics and Business.

Donna was wrong, IMO. I always enjoy the everyday scenes in soaps - conversations, family or work life, rather than the high drama. Look how successful comedies about ordinary people are too - 'Roseanne'being an excellent example. Or things like Gogglebox - a show about everyday people commenting on what they see in telly!

Donna was looking at it from the perspective of what was big with the other soaps of the time. Dynasty was basically a fashion show and Dallas and Falcon Crest were shot on location in sweeping ranches and vineyards. Knots on the other hand looked rather drab by comparison. She encouraged them to improve the wardrobe and they started filming out in Malibu and later on the ranch when she was Gary moved off the cul de sac. As kitkat said, it happened organically enough.

Similarly, I watched a documentary called The Cult of Sunday Night recently where they talked about the BBC's hit Sunday night dramas and it was pointed out that Howard's Way followed a similar path where it started out as a middle class couple dealing with the husband's redundancy and new career and by the time it ended, it was all fashion houses and aristocracy and was nearly unrecognisable from the original concept.