Does anyone watch The Bold & the Beautiful? I always hated it but recently kind of watched it as a substitute (my favorite soap had been cancelled after 54 years on air) and strangely I start to really like it.

There's something about soaps (& especially American soaps) that I really love. It's the only thing I actively watch.

 

I imagine that B&B is probably not aired in the UK though.

I don't think it's aired here in Ireland, but I used to watch it as a kid in Estonia. It's probably fair to say it was quite a big thing over there, and possibly still is. It was so dramatic which kinda made it funny. The only soap I watch now is Home and Away.

Too bad it isn't aired there. Kind of strange though considering it's aired in every continent and it's the most popular soap opera worldwide.

But I guess the UK has enough soaps as it is :P

It's an absolutely APPALLING show (which from what I understand has spent the past few years edging their veteran stars out the door so that they can focus on one repetitve love triangle). As far as trashy American soaps go, it's all about General Hospital, which genuinely has a cast that are much better than the soap format itself (Carolynn Hennesy who may be known to others as Barb from Cougar Town is a highlight)

Does she just play a variation on Barb? That alone would be worth thirty minutes of my time.

She hasn't yet f***ed 18 year olds or dressed onscreen as a slutty haystack, as General Hospital is a daytime soap. But she's got the same sharp and irreverent wit, likes to get trolleyed and play strip pool, and is usually a healthy dose of comic relief amidst a sea of angsty tragic heroines, warring Alexis Colby caricatures, and tortured gangsters. She plays a defence attorney called Diane Miller who spends her time helping outright criminals escape the law in order to fund her fetish for Jimmy Choos - she's not a leading character and tends to disappear for large chunks of time in a go, alas. Hennesy has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies and spreads herself quite thinly (I believe she's also in the current series of True Blood, and she's carving out a career as an author - one of her books was actually a novelised spin-off of General Hospital).

 

In all truth, General Hospital is also an APPALLING show (despite the decent actors, it shares the same dodgy low-budget production values and amateur scriptwriting as every other two-bit American soap), but it appeals to the side of me that has remained nostalgic for Sunset Beach.

It's an absolutely APPALLING show (which from what I understand has spent the past few years edging their veteran stars out the door so that they can focus on one repetitve love triangle). As far as trashy American soaps go, it's all about General Hospital, which genuinely has a cast that are much better than the soap format itself (Carolynn Hennesy who may be known to others as Barb from Cougar Town is a highlight)

 

They do have the reputation of dropping actors without explaining why (unfortunately) and it's also true that they are focusing on a boring repetitive love triangle, trying to recreate the popular '90s triangle of Ridge/Taylor/Brooke (but horribly failing)

I tried to watch General Hospital after As the World Turns got axed but their current attempt to recreate Port Charles with the vampires is cringeworthy. And their current headwriter (who actually did decent work on One Life to Live) is known for repeating his storylines and I got sick of watching the same things he wrote for One Life to Live, only now with different characters.

It's true the vampire stuff is ridiculous and needs to be curtailed soon, although I can understand why they felt the need to address it what with half of the Port Charles cast now on General Hospital. The one area that the new writers have vastly improved upon is they seem to really understand and be respectful of show history, and they've brought back near enough every historical "legendary" character in some form or another. All they need to do now is dial down the campness a bit (bye-bye to vampires, and Olivia the town psychic needs to stop screaming at imaginary dogs).