Soap is an American sitcom that originally ran on ABC from September 13, 1977 until April 20, 1981. The show was created as a night-time parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour prime time comedy. Similar to a soap opera, the show's story was presented in a serial format and included melodramatic plot elements such as alien abduction, demonic possession, murder, and kidnapping. In 2007 it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME", and in 2010, the Tates and the Campbells ranked at number 17 in TV Guide's list of "TV's Top Families".
The show was created, written, and executively produced by Susan Harris, and also executively produced by Paul Junger Witt (Harris' future husband) and Tony Thomas. Each returning season was preceded by a 90-minute retrospective of the previous season. Two of these retrospectives were made available on VHS in 1994, but were not included on any DVD collections.
The show aired 85 episodes over the course of four seasons. Eight of these (including the final four) aired as one-hour episodes during the original run on ABC. These hour-long episodes were later split in two, yielding 93 half-hour episodes for syndication. Like most sitcoms of the era, Soap was videotaped rather than filmed, but this coincidentally helped further its emulation of the daytime soap opera format, as most such productions were also videotaped.
Since its cancellation, Soap's reputation has grown and it is often considered one of the best shows in television history. Much praise has been given to its "exceptionally rich cast" of performers "such as was seldom seen on any serious dramatic show". In a 1982 post-series analysis in The Village Voice published just as the series was first entering syndication, TV critic Tom Carson lauded the ensemble saying that "the cast matches the best TV series rep troupes ever." Carson went on to note that Soap "patently started out intended as a lampoon of middle-class values, and ended up instead as a weirdly offbeat celebration of them". In 2007, Time magazine, which initially panned the show, named it one of the 100 Best Shows of All-Time. The Museum of Broadcast Communications said that Soap is "arguably one of the most creative efforts by network television before or after". In 2010, The Huffington Post called Soap a "timeless comedy" and concluded: "Rarely does a show come along with such a unique voice and vision from the first episode".
Soap was nominated for a total 17 Emmy Awards including:
Outstanding Comedy Series—nominated: 1978, 1980, 1981
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (Richard Mulligan)—won: 1980, nominated: 1981
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Cathryn Damon)—won: 1980, nominated: 1978, 1981
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Katherine Helmond)—nominated: 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Robert Guillaume)—won: 1979
Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series (Jay Sandrich)—nominated: 1978, 1979
Outstanding Art Direction in a Comedy Series—won: 1978
Outstanding Achievement in Video Tape Editing in a Comedy Series—nominated: 1978
At the 1981 Golden Globe Awards, Katherine Helmond won Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series—Musical/Comedy. That same year, the program was also nominated for Best TV Series—Musical/Comedy.
Director Jay Sandrich was nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series' at the DGA Awards in 1978 and 1979.