{"id":464512,"date":"2026-06-06T21:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T21:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/464512\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T21:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T21:29:09","slug":"why-the-hamptons-failed-as-a-prime-time-soap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/464512\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ‘The Hamptons’ failed as a prime-time soap"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 1983, the hottest trend on network TV was the prime-time soap opera: Shows like “Dynasty,” “Dallas,” “Falcon Crest” and “Knots Landing” captivated viewers with their tales of treachery, romance and incest among the ultra-rich.<\/p>\n

So, thought ABC, why not make\u00a0room for one more, especially in the summer when these shows were airing reruns? That one more would be\u00a0 among \u00a0TV’s biggest turkeys and we can proudly\u00a0hail it as our own.<\/p>\n

We’re talking about\u00a0\u00a0“The Hamptons,” a misguided attempt to bring the daytime soap sensibility to prime time.<\/p>\n

Yes, Long Island was (nominally) the setting.\u00a0But if you blinked,\u00a0it was gone.<\/p>\n

“Nighttime megahits like ‘Dynasty’\u00a0and ‘Dallas’\u00a0were usually over the top to the point of campiness,” explained Connie Passalacqua Hayman, a veteran soap opera journalist.”\u00a0“Everyone was mega-rich, the characters were bigger than life and wore outlandish costumes made by famous designers. In contrast, ‘The Hamptons’ was more like a toned-down daytime soap opera. It had no big stars like John Forsythe\u00a0or Larry Hagman. Instead it featured mostly daytime soap retread actors. Even incest and murder story lines couldn’t spice it up.”<\/p>\n

The show certainly had a good pedigree: It was created\u00a0by Gloria Monty, who had turned “General Hospital” into a\u00a0national phenomenon just two years earlier with its storyline about the romance and subsequent wedding of Luke (Anthony Geary) and Laura (Genie Francis).<\/p>\n

“The Hamptons” focused on two feuding families, the Chadways and the Duncan-Mortimers, dynastic owners of a\u00a0high-end Manhattan\u00a0 department store.\u00a0 A lot of the action thus had to take place in the city, but the characters did summer\u00a0in East Hampton. The cast was populated mostly with daytime actors, the most well-known being Leigh Taylor Young (“Peyton Place”) and Bibi Besch (“Somerset”).<\/p>\n

ABC gave “The Hamptons”\u00a0\u00a0a five-episode order, hoping that would be enough to stir viewers’ interest to turn it into\u00a0a full-season series. (CBS had tried the same five-part formula with “Dallas” in 1978 with much success.)\u00a0The show was\u00a0shot on videotape to look like a\u00a0daytime drama and\u00a0was filmed partially on the East End, with some segments taped in other parts of Long Island and Westchester. The show premiered on July 27 at 9 p.m.<\/p>\n

On opening night, Newsday sent two\u00a0reporters to the East End to gauge local\u00a0reaction. Max Blum of New York and Sagaponack,\u00a0who was watching the show with 10 others at J.G. Melon in Bridgehampton,\u00a0didn’t mince words:\u00a0“It was the worst thing i saw in my life. It wasn’t about the Hamptons, it was about hospitals.”<\/p>\n

And the Newsday reporters couldn’t resist a little snark: “The viewers were impressed\u00a0by the opening shots — the windmill at Water Mill, the beach at Southampton, the country club in … oops …\u00a0Westchester that’s supposed to be Southampton.”<\/p>\n

After viewing the first episode, Newsday’s longtime\u00a0TV critic\u00a0Marvin Kitman labeled\u00a0the show\u00a0a “festival of bad acting,” bemoaning that the show did not look like real Hamptons. Kitman described “The Hamptons” as\u00a0“a\u00a0third-generation rip-off of ‘Dallas,’\u00a0moving the usual conflict from oil to merchandising. but it’s the same venal people wishing everyone else was dead.”<\/p>\n

The Washington Post’s critic made Kitman seem positively diplomatic:\u00a0“Totally, irredeemably, amateurishly and idiotically worthless.”<\/p>\n

Over the next five weeks, viewers saw the usual daytime tropes: Boardroom battles, bitter family feuds, secret affairs, and the contrast between old aristocratic wealth and aggressive new money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But viewers didn’t tune in and the show aired its final episode of Aug. 24.\u00a0And not surprisingly, ABC nixed the plant to make it a full-time series.<\/p>\n

Today it is virtually impossible to find a full episode of “The Hamptons.” The best you can do is a podcast discussion<\/a>,\u00a0a grainy video of the show’s introduction<\/a> or two trailers<\/a> on YouTube. In the latter’s 50 seconds\u00a0you’ll get a flavor of the show from the voice-of-God narrator (“From the bedrooms\u00a0to the boardrooms”) to some choice snippets\u00a0of overheated acting. Don’t forget to gape at those ’80s hairdos.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, maybe deep in the basement or wine cellar of an East Hampton mansion, someone has stashed\u00a0their\u00a0collection of “Hamptons” VHS tapes. If so, please\u00a0share\u00a0with the world immediately.<\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/p>\n

\n\tAndy Edelstein, Newsday’s entertainment editor, supervises coverage of TV, celebrities, movies and pop music. He has written three books on popular culture, including “The Brady Bunch Book.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the summer of 1983, the hottest trend on network TV was the prime-time soap opera: Shows like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,2388,69,437,14857],"class_list":["post-464512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nostalgia","tag-nz","tag-tv","tag-tv-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}