The novel … reads like an odd mashup of a dark soap opera like Peyton Place with one of those very British Barbara Pym novels, depicting small-town, circumscribed lives".
The novel — which takes place in the tiny, fictional English village of Pagford, and chronicles the political and personal fallout created by the sudden death of a member of the parish council named Barry Fairbrother — reads like an odd mash-up of a dark soap opera like "Peyton Place" with one of those very British Barbara Pym novels, depicting small-town, circumscribed lives.
A jet-black satire set among a family of dysfunctional morticians, Six Feet Under is a taboo-breaking joy (I know you already know this, but it's my first time - be gentle with me) that recalls the dark soap-operatic pleasures of David Lynch's Twin Peaks.
Its biggest programme, "dark fun" soap opera Desperate Housewives, has been sold to most major territories already.
"Netflix members loved the potent combination of sexy monsters, mystery, and the dark family soap opera that ended with a huge twist, leaving audiences worldwide totally shocked.
Thirty years ago, the ABC soap "Dark Shadows" actually revolved around the personal travails of vampires and werewolves.
In the nineteen-sixties, more ambitious writers raised the stakes, with the gothic soap "Dark Shadows," the social-relevance soap "One Life to Live," and the prime-time sensation "Peyton Place," which ran several nights a week.
Ms. Egan explained that she owed her novel to two sources: Henry James's "Turn of the Screw" and "Dark Shadows," a soap opera she loved in her childhood.
It wasn't until I was in high school that fangs started to seem alluring — with the arrival of the campy daytime soap "Dark Shadows," set in Maine and featuring the vampire Barnabas Collins.
Burton's gothic comedy is based on an American TV classic – or so we're told, since the supernatural daytime soap Dark Shadows ran in the United States from 1966 to 1971 but is largely unknown in Britain.
Still, most Sci Fi Channel programming remains retread series, grade-B TV movies and the occasional big-budget film you've already seen 1,000 times (although it does have the rights to one of the juiciest guilty pleasures on all of television, the old vampire soap "Dark Shadows," which is shown weekday mornings).
