u/Dylan_Bowie

NBC rolled out the big guns for Berrenger’s, as the network made one final attempt to jump on the 80’s primetime soap bandwagon. Produced by Lorimar (the company behind Dallas, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest) Berrenger’s shared a number of behind the scenes staff with the aforementioned shows (Dallas creator David Jacobs was a producer).

Set in the titular New York department store, the show followed the intertwined lives of the super wealthy Berrenger dynasty and their various staff and business rivals. Taxi’s Jeff Conaway and future Dr. Quinn star Jonelle Allen were among the more notable names in the cast.

Despite the show’s high calibre production team, the show flopped and was taken off the air after 12 episodes (David Jacob’s later described it as a “fiasco”). Too many characters and a Saturday night timeslot didn’t help the show’s cause, in addition to the ongoing decline in interest in new primetime soaps in general.

Long running daytime soap, set in the fictional city of Monticello, that mixed personal dramas with crime and mystery storylines. The show’s protagonist was Mike Karr, who progressed from police officer to DA over the course of the show’s run (the character was played by three different actors across 28 years). He was surrounded by a motley crew of police officers, lawyers, journalists and criminals, with storylines focusing on murder, cults, terrorist organisations and randomly, a killer puppet.

Many stars did a stint on the show when they were starting out, including John Travolta, Julianne Moore, Lori Loughlin, Marcia Cross and Frances Fisher. Its late afternoon timeslot and focus on crime stories, made the show popular with male viewers, something of an anomaly among daytime soap audiences of the time. There’s quite a lot of the show’s latter years out there and having watched an arc from 1979-80, I have to say that while very low budget, it’s really good. Rarely gets a mention these days as it was last seen in syndication back in the 80’s/90’s.