Dark Shadows
Dark Shadows is an American gothic soap opera that ran from June 27, 1966, to April 2, 1971, on the ABC television network during the week. Dan Curtis came up with the idea for the show. Art Wallace wrote the story bible, and it does not talk about anything supernatural. When ghosts were added about six months after the show started, it was a first for daytime TV. When vampire Barnabas Collins showed up a year into the show, it became a huge hit. There were also werewolves, zombies, monsters made by people, witches, warlocks, time travel, and a parallel universe in Dark Shadows. A small group of actors played many different parts, and as people came and went, some roles were played by more than one actor. Along with Art Wallace, major writers like Malcolm Marmorstein, Sam Hall, Gordon Russell, and Violet Welles were also important. Dark Shadows stood out because of how melodramatic it was, how atmospheric the rooms were, how memorable the stories were, how many dramatic plot twists there were, how adventurous the music score was, and how many characters and heroic adventures there were. It has become something of a classic and still has a strong cult following. Even though the original series only ran for five years, because it was a daily daytime drama, it had more single episodes than most other science fiction/fantasy shows on English-language TV, including Doctor Who and the whole Star Trek TV franchise. The only soap opera with more episodes is Passions, which has 2,231 episodes.
Released: 1966-06-27