Santa Barbara
By Christophe Damour, Dictionnaire de la Télévision Française, 2007	Home   Cette page en Français

Announced as a 80 episodes mini-series during its first airing, Santa Barbara will count some more than 2000 after ten years of existence, including 1000 always never seen in France. In the city of the west coast of the United States which gives its title to the soap, the Capwells and the Lockridges, two rival families, hate themselves. On this traditional plot will come to be grafted all the typical conceivable intrigues of the melodrama, between impossible loves (a rich heir in love with a house employee, the love affair of a Capwell and a Lockridge) and family secrecies like adulteries, illegitimate children or babies exchange at birth. The script even borrows elements from other universes, as catastrophe films (an earthquake shakes the city) or police films, with its multiple investigations on mysterious murders (the Capwells' preferred son is assassinated as of the first episode and each character of the show will be seen as a potential culprit). There even prowls a traumatized serial killer who assassinates fair young girls and signs his crimes by leaving carnations on the spot. Going beyond the very free tone suitable for this kind of program (the marriages are done and undone, the young and pure Kelly Capwell collects the lovers), the scenario writers will not hesitate to invent extravagant situations, like Eden Capwell's rape by her gynaecologist.

The adventures follow one another in a skilful mixture of suspense and glamour, with a special mention for the star couple formed by the blonde Eden (Marcy Walker) and tenebrous Cruz Castillo (A Martinez), police inspector and man of action of the show. The characters are colourful and served by picturesque actors and thoroughly selected French voices, like cynical Mason Capwell (Lane Davis), or the cheating district attorney Keith Timmons (Justin Deas). Last but not least, there are the female characters, with in head the cruel Augusta Lockridge (Louise Sorel) or the annoying Gina (who has according to the episodes a different family name because of her multiple marriages with several characters from the show - interpreted by Robin Mattson).

But after having known a nice success during several years, the show ended up wearying. With the increasingly weird schemes and the exhaustion of the various possible love combinations between all the characters get added the excessive interchangeability of the actors : C.C. Capwell (Charles Bateman), patriarch with white hair which evoked Jock Ewing in Dallas, was replaced by an actor with buckled grey hair (Jed Allan). And when Robin Wright leaves for the cinema, not less than three other actresses follow one another for the part of Kelly. As recalled by Florence Dupont in her book Homère et Dallas, in the televised series "The actors do not play the roles, they are the roles". To change the actors was fatal for the adhesion of the public to the characters.

Initially programmed at the beginning of the evening, the show will be gradually moved to time slots in the afternoon, then the morning, before to be definitively stopped and replaced by games.