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Guiding Light

02 January 2009

Farewell 2008

It’s been rather difficult approaching 2008’s Best and Worst post.  

Mainly because there’s a lot that I haven’t watched this past year.  It’s a bit of a challenge categorising things I haven’t actually watched.  

So, I’m not doing a Best and Worst, I’m just doing a quick fire summary of the shows, and then moving on to catching up on the last month’s worth of OLTL and starting in on Y&R.

I saw 2008 in soaps as follows:

Days: BORING and completely unwatchable in the second half of the year.

GH: Boring, but scattered with some great, funny, lovely, occasionally sexy moments.  Making it even more frustrating than Days, because you can’t completely ignore it.

OLTL: Uneven, but never boring, and at times quite brilliant.

Y&R: Apparently so on the upsurge that I must absolutely make time to watch in the new year.

AMC: 90% appalling, but still capable of delivering a lovely tribute episode to a much loved actress/character in Eileen Herlie/Myrtle, a fantastic reunion of much loved characters in Angie and Jesse and someone who looks hot even with a beard and a crappy storyline in Thorsten Kaye.

B&B: I gather there were bears.  Now a prime time show with quite reasonable ratings in my home country.

ATWT:  Still have never watched it.

GL:  On location and in the ratings basement.

Passions: Gone to soap heaven, or perhaps pergatory.

Night Shift:  Some parts were so fabulous that it made the whole show fabulous even though in reality it was a little uneven.  True soap winner of the year.

And because I can't completely ignore Bests and Worsts:

- the Annual Jane Eliot Ageing Gracefully Yet Spectacularly Award this year is a tie between Days' Renee Jones and AMC's Debbi Morgan, both of whom look gorgeous and years younger than their actual years; and

- the Worst Wardrobe Award goes to Days' Kate Roberts, this year finally nudging out Carly Corinthos-Multiple-Names.

01 March 2008

Guiding Light Revamp

Curiousity got the best of me and I took a little glance at the premiere of the new hand-held camera and locations version of Guiding Light on You Tube this afternoon. Given that my entire history with the show consists of half glanced at coverage in soap magazines years ago and a few episodes of Roger and Holly's reunion of sorts in the summer of 1993, obviously I wasn't watching for the stories.

From the time of the announcement of the production change my feeling was that in all likelihood it would be a positive rather than a negative, but that, like everyone else, if the show was going to survive then it's not only budget cuts and production changes that need to be made, but that the writing also has to be good.

I certainly didn't think that shooting hand-held was going to kill the show. And I still don't.

There was a bit too much shakey-cam, but that wasn't as off-putting as the direction generally. Largely with the sudden embracing of super close-ups where they seemed unnecessary. These things still need room to breathe, people.

And it definitely looked cold outside, so I'm guessing outfits are going to start getting very season appropriate, very fast.

But generally, so far, so good.