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new shows 2025
Beyond the Gates, a new soap opera, premiered last Monday afternoon on CBS. It's the story of a wealthy African-American community in Maryland. The only cast member I recognize is Clifton Davis; the others are all new to me. At first I thought the grandmother was played by Della Reese, but she's gone now.
Two details totally surprised me: the series is sponsored by Procter & Gamble, which I thought had long-since gotten out of the soap opera business; and that no one has complained about DEI. It's a moot point, anyway. There's been only one other black-oriented soap on TV, and that was Generations in the early 1990s. Every other soap opera, starting with the ones on the radio in the 1930s, have been about whites. (That still doesn't stop some folks from complaining.)
The negatives:
Many of the women look alike. They are thin with long poker straight slicked black hair that seems to be pasted to their heads.
Some of the clothes are ugly, and ALL of the curtains are ugly!
The sets are very small, except for the fake indoor park. Even though there are sometimes people walking in the background, you can tell the program is filmed indoors, because the plants, hair and clothing never shift in the wind.
The plots have been used many times before: The unwed mother who raised her daughter while the father ignored her, and now the two women are plotting revenge. The nutty ex-wife who goes to her ex-husband's marriage to a much-younger women and holds everyone at gunpoint. The woman giving birth in a stuck elevator.
The positives: Clifton Davis and the woman who plays his wife, even if they are jerks at times. I just wish they had more screen time.
The opening credits with the huge mansion.
I don't watch this in the afternoon, but it is a fun show to watch in the evening if nothing is on prime-time TV.
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