Santa Barbara : the cultest show of the 80's
By Emmanuelle Miquet, Télé Star, 2001	Home   Cette page en Français

Disappeared from our screens, five years ago, the show Santa Barbara does its come-back on the cable. Interplanetary cathodic phenomenon, it held in breath the televiewers of TF1 during ten years. Incredibly inflated hair, in every circumstances; an intrigue where treasons, impossible loves, fights, disappearances and murders constitute the everyday life of the characters; a generic which sounds, intact, in our ears... Impossible to have erased from ones memory Santa Barbara, one of the most popular soap-operas (of English soap, because these shows were initially produced by firms of detergent)  that television ever aired. Born in the United States in July 1984 from the imagination of Bridget and Jerry Dobson, a couple of famous writers in the other side of the Atlantic, the show is based on the good old plot of the two enemy families : here, the powerful Capwells, and the not less influential Lockridges, both resident of the luxurious seaside resort of Santa Barbara, near Los Angeles.

It seems very classic. At the time, however, Santa Barbara is presented like an innovative show. Its assets ? More humour and more outside scenes (even if the majority are shot in a gigantic studio of 1800 m2 which counts nine stages) that for the others soaps. What about the consequence ? The first year of its airing on the network NBC (at the creation of Santa Barbara, NBC had signed for 26 episodes), neither the sentimental contentions of the Capwell sisters, Eden and Kelly, nor the sex appeal of lieutenant Cruz Castillo, gain the expected success. At the moment when the writers imagine an earthquake which would make disappear the three quarters of the cast - and would thus allow to set out again on new bases - Santa Barbara finds its public.

Women in majority become completely addicted, and the network consults them to invent the continuation of the adventures of their preferred heroes. Very quickly, this show, become emblematic of the Eighties, is exported. In Canada, in Australia, in Spain, in Italy, in Turkey, in Great Britain, in South Africa, in the Scandinavian countries, and in France, where Santa Barbara arrives on October 14, 1985, at 18.45 p.m., on TF1. A little event which will become bigger. On January 3, 1989, the ratings displays a point to... 9 million televiewers.

Its record before the decline. Change of writers, departures of the majority of the famous actors... the ratings is exhausted. In spring 1995, TF1 makes the show disappearing well before the end of its 2137 episodes. In the United States, Santa Barbara has already disappeared from the screens two years ago, but gained its access to the Pantheon of soap-operas stars : in eight years and a half of existence, it received six Emmy awards.