20th Century Fox dipped into daytime soaps in the early 70's. First, they tried The Best of Everything on ABC, which, I think, lasted a year or less.
Then, the studio decided to turn to a familiar brand.
Return to Peyton Place was a daily continuation of the earlier ABC primetime series, but this time, the show aired on NBC (don't ask), and ran for nearly 2 full years (April 1972-January 1974). Of course, there was a great deal of cast turnover in the five years in between series. For example, Ryan O'Neal had transitioned to movies (i.e. "Love Story"), and would not return. Lawrence P. Casey (ex-The Rat Patrol) stepped in to fill O'Neal's role as Rodney Carrington, but after over a year, Casey was gone, replaced by Yale Summers (ex-Daktari). Cast turnover was and still is fairly common in daytime drama. One other case had radio & TV veteran Stacy Harris in the original cast in 1972, until he left and Frank Maxwell (ex-The Second Hundred Years) took his place.
Actual series footage seems to have been lost to the mists of time. YouTube poster jsellison created what he thought the open might look like:
The series did well enough initially to warrant a 1-shot primetime episode in 1973. However, ratings began to decline after CBS revived Match Game, and NBC pulled the plug at the start of 1974.
No rating.
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