Soap is an American sitcom television series that originally ran on ABC from September 13, , until April 20, The show was created as a nighttime parody of daytime soap operas , presented as a weekly half-hour prime time comedy. Similar to a soap opera, the show's story was presented in a serial format, and featured melodramatic plotlines including alien abduction , demonic possession, extramarital affairs, murder, kidnapping, unknown diseases, amnesia , cults, organized crime , a communist revolution , and teacher-student relationships.
Each returning season was preceded by a minute retrospective of the previous season. The show aired 85 episodes over the course of four seasons. Of these, eight episodes including the final four aired as one-hour episodes during the original run on ABC.
These hour-long episodes were later split in two, yielding 93 half-hour episodes for syndication. Like most sitcoms of the era, Soap was videotaped rather than filmed , but this helped further its emulation of the daytime soap opera format, as most such productions were also videotaped. All episodes are available on Region 1 DVD in four box sets. The series has rerun in syndication on local channels as well as on cable. The show starred Katherine Helmond and Cathryn Damon as sisters and matriarchs of their own families.
The cast also included several former soap opera actors. Additionally, after the series ended, Lynne Moody Polly Dawson went in to appear in a recurring capacity on primetime soap opera Knots Landing which also starred Ted Shackelford , who appeared on Soap in a guest appearance , and Roscoe Lee Browne appeared in a recurring guest role in the seventh season of Falcon Crest.
In the opening sequence of the first installment, the announcer says "This is the story of two sisters—Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell". The Tates live in a wealthy neighborhood the announcer calls it the neighborhood known as "Rich". Jessica Tate Katherine Helmond and her husband, Chester Robert Mandan , are hardly models of fidelity, as their various love affairs result in several family mishaps, including the murder of Peter Campbell [ 5 ] Robert Urich , the stepson of her sister Mary Cathryn Damon.
