The serial began with the advent of
movie serials of the early 20th century. With the emergence of television and subsequent decline of the movie-going audience, production of movie serials ceased due to the decreasing revenues. But the serial lived on, moving instead to the small screen and the world of
Broadcast syndication television
reruns.
Soap operas The television serial format as known today originated in radio, in the form of children's adventure shows and daily 15-minute programs known as
soap operas (so-called because many of these shows were
sponsored by soap companies, such as
Colgate-Palmolive and
Procter & Gamble). Soap operas were specifically engineered to appeal to women (with the intention of increasing sale of soap). They usually ran from Monday through Friday at the same time every day. A show called The Smith Family which ran only one night a week on WENR in Chicago during the early 1930s was credited as the "great-granddaddy of the soap operas" by radio historian Francis Chase, Jr. One of the other shows that helped pioneer the daytime soap opera/serial was
The Guiding Light, which debuted on
NBC radio in 1937, and then switched to
CBS Television in 1952.
The Guiding Light final episode aired on September 18, 2009, having a total of 15,762 episodes air on CBS. Some of the characters in soap operas have been portrayed as long-suffering (a common theme even in some of today's serials along with the social and economical issues of the day). Children's adventure serials were more like
film serials, with continuing characters involved in exploits with episodes that often ended in a cliffhanger situation;
Westerns were a particularly popular format for children's serials on the radio.
Guiding Light and such other daytime television program serials such as
Search for Tomorrow,
Love of Life,
The Secret Storm,
As the World Turns,
The Edge of Night,
The Doctors,
Another World,
Dark Shadows,
One Life to Live, and
All My Children were popular in the Golden and Silver Ages of television and still are today. Aside from the social issues, the style and presentation of these shows have changed. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s the drama was underscored with traditional organ music, and in the 1970s and the 1980s a full orchestra provided the score, the daytime dramas of today use cutting-edged synth-driven music (in a way, music for soaps has come full-circle, from the keyboard to the keyboard). The nighttime serials are a different story, though the concept is also nothing new. In the 1960s, ABC aired the first real breakthrough nighttime serial,
Peyton Place, inspired by the novel and theatrical film of the same name. After its cancellation, the format went somewhat dormant until Norman Lear produced
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in 1976. In 1977, ABC created another comedy soap (aptly called
Soap). Although the show was controversial for its time (with a homosexual character among its cast roster), it was (and still is today) a cult classic. The success of
Dallas popularized serial storylines on prime-time television. Its end-of-season
cliffhangers, such as "
Who shot J. R.?" and "Bobby in the Shower?", influenced other shows like
Dynasty (ABC's answer to
Dallas),
Knots Landing,
Falcon Crest,
The Colbys,
Flamingo Road,
Hotel,
The Yellow Rose,
Bare Essence, and ''
Berrenger's. There were some serial shows such as Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere'' that did not officially fit into this category, but were nonetheless ratings hits season after season. While the last of the 1980s nighttime soaps ended during the first years of the following decade, then a second wave came with series like
Beverly Hills, 90210,
Melrose Place,
Models, Inc.,
Savannah and
Central Park West. But as the 1990s came to a close, the primetime soap as an official format gradually faded away, where it largely seems to remain as of the middle of the first decade of the 21st century in the United States.
Other dramas In the 1990s, American serial dramas included
Twin Peaks,
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and
Babylon 5. The trend continued in the 2000s with
24. Cable networks also produced serial dramas such as
The Sopranos,
Battlestar Galactica,
Dexter,
The Wire,
Breaking Bad and its
spin-off Better Call Saul. Series such as
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Veronica Mars,
Homicide: Life on the Street,
The Good Wife,
The X-Files and
Damages fall somewhere between, featuring self-encapsulated plots that are resolved by the end of each episode, but also having overarching plots that span multiple episodes. The more serialized its storytelling, the less likely a show is to fare well in repeats. The format places a demand on episodes to be run in order, without which story arcs stretching over many episodes may be difficult for new viewers to delve into.
Desperate Housewives also falls into the category while each season involves a new mystery that spans an entire season (and on one occasion, half the season) while planting hints throughout the episodes until the climax in the finale. To a lesser extent, series such as
House and
Fringe may also feature ongoing story arcs, but episodes are more self-encapsulated and so the series fall into a more conventional drama category.
Fringe has experimented with "myth-alones", a hybrid that attempts to advance the story arc in a self-contained episode. Early in their runs, shows such as
Lost, and
Torchwood put greater emphasis on the "story-of-the-week", but over time story arcs begin to dominate. In contrast,
Alias became more focused on standalone stories in later seasons, because of pressures by network executives. == Effect of a serial model on commercial success ==