Soap operas, and we're talking here of the real thing, not the glorified weekly big budget versions usually aired in the evening, such as "Dynasty", "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest", but the honest to God every day, come rain or shine or meteor strikes, variety, gets little love either from critics or even most of their audiences, and for good reason. A fair number of them actually subtract from the sum total of human culture.

The name "soap opera" derives from the fact that most of these serials were aired during the daytime, in an era when many middle class women were still not part of the regular workforce and were stay at home wives. Since these housewives made up the bulk of the audience, advertisers targeted their commercials towards them by running spots for household products, such as soaps.

Though originally an American formula, soap operas are a world wide phenomenon. There's the British "Coronation Street", which has been on the air since 1960 and is still among the highest rated shows in Britain, and there's numerous Latin-American and Australian productions with a huge following world wide.

Most of them are, as mentioned, fairly sub-par tales of intrigue and romance in a contemporary setting, each episode showing little narrative progression from the last, and that once aired, sink back into the obscurity they so richly deserve.

But one soap opera would not only garner a cult following, but also have a very real impact on the later entertainment industry, resulting among other things in it being regularly shown in syndication to this day and being the only such show being available in its entirety on video, and now on DVD.

A June night of 1966 a train is speeding towards the seaside village of Collinsport, Maine. On board Victoria Winters, a young woman without a past, on her way to take up the position of governess to a young boy, David Collins, of the wealthy Collins family, is staring out into the dark.

So began the soap opera "Dark Shadows". The Dan Curtis produced show would eventually air for five years, for a total of 1245 episodes and a couple of theatrical films. That might sound like a lot. But by soap opera standards it's actually a rather limited run.

Some soaps originally got underway as radio shows and made the transition to the new medium of television, going on almost for generations. The show "Guiding Light" for example began life on NBC Radio back in 1937, and is still going strong on CBS television to this day, making it the longest running drama in television history, with more than 15,000 episodes.

During its first hundred odd episodes "Dark Shadows" in many ways followed the standard soap formula. But there were always hints at unusual themes, beginning with the title screen, with its Gothic looking letters floating over the outline of the dark and foreboding Collinwood mansion. And little by little these mere aesthetic features would be joined to ever more outré storylines, starting with hints of the house being haunted.

In the first months of its run the show didn't boast very impressive viewership numbers, and was always on the brink of cancellation. And indeed, when aired in syndication the first 200 episodes are usually left out, as they are in the DVD releases. To catch these you'd have dig out that old VCR from the attic, and get the VHS tape release of the show, or look to internet based sources of dubious legality.

It wasn't until episode 210 that the show really took off and racked up increasingly better ratings. That's when the petty criminal Willy Loomis, indulging in a spot of grave robbing to augment his pinched finances, released the vampire Barnabas Collins, played by the Canadian Shakespearean stage actor Jonathan Frid, from the Collins family mausoleum, where he had been imprisoned since the late 18th century.

Originally the character was only meant to be one in a series of villainous protagonists over a hundred or so episodes. But when ratings skyrocketed and fan-mail started pouring in from smitten viewers plans were hastily redrawn. Looking older than his 43 years at the time, and hardly what you'd call conventionally handsome, aside from playing what was still a rather clearly evil character, Frid was an unlikely candidate for romantic heartthrob. But viewers had obviously caught on to the undertone of tragedy which he had brought to his portrayal of Barnabas Collins.

The character created by Frid and Curtis, the angst ridden vampire anti-hero with genuinely tragic dimensions, doomed to forever struggle with his own nature and seeking redemption, would become the model without which such later works as Anne Rice's vampire novels and Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" might never have been.

This is where the show made another bold leap. Seeking to, if not redeem Barnabas, then at least to give his actions in the present a credible background, and to open the possibility of his later redemption, Victoria Winters is, through a séance, thrown back in time, to the Collinsport of 1795, where the as yet human Barnabas lives with his family, all of whom are played, but in different roles, by the actors from the present. This was a formula that was to be repeated a couple of times through the series' run, allowing the action to roam through centuries and the actors to take on a multitude of different parts. And from his beginnings as a bit part, Barnabas Collins would more and more take centre stage, playing the role of the guardian of the family through the ages, but always tragically set apart from them, forever denied the normality he so longs for. His own redemption being out of reach, he can only strive for it on behalf of others.

Over the following years the show would run through one staple of Gothic fiction after another, Frankenstein's monster, witches, werewolves and the legions of Hell and its reigning monarch himself. Curtis has later claimed, with some credibility, that the show was finally ended, not because of declining ratings, but due to them having exhausted the supply of horror storylines.

But Gothic novels were hardly the only source of inspiration that went into the series. With postmodern abandon, and a somewhat relaxed attitude towards copyrights, classic films such as "Rebecca", "Laura", "Gaslight", "The Maltese Falcon" and a number of others were raided for plots and themes.

Due to the exorbitant cost of editing videotape in the 1960s, the show was mostly shot by simply laying down one scene after another on the tape, and only doing retakes in the case of catastrophic mishaps. When you keep in mind that they had to churn our five episodes a week, this, as might be expected, makes for television that is far rougher around the edges than most viewers today are accustomed to.

There are two dollar "special effects" that go wrong in all the special ways, "stone" walls that wobble at the slightest touch, actors forgetting their lines and heroically soldiering on with absurd improvisations, the ever present boom mic hovering like some particularly furry bat at the top of the frame, cameras dollying into furniture, and actors and studio hands on their cigarette break walking into frame. Watching, especially the early years, one wonders what it took for a second take. It must have been something like a car full of rodeo clowns driving through the set, wreaking havoc and destruction in their path.

The immediacy of it is actually akin to theatre; not the well rehearsed and over produced theatre of today, but rather the theatre of old, when the actors got handed the last scenes of a freshly written play, with the ink still not dry, just moments before rushing onstage, the house filled with people eating, or throwing, fruit, shouting comments to the action, and all but climbing onstage themselves. The effect is paradoxically not to jerk us out of the narrative, but rather to immerse us even deeper into it. The all too obvious struggles of the people both behind and in front of the camera merge with and underscores the melodramatic antics of the characters they play, lending the sometimes ridiculous a certain pathos.

One contributing factor to "Dark Shadows"' continued popularity, and its re-watchability, is to be found in the very structure of the storytelling. Unlike the bog standard soap opera, where things move ahead at a leisurely pace, nothing ever really changes, and viewers might well drop in a decade later without missing a beat, "Dark Shadows" raced ahead, and built elaborate story arcs, reminiscent of the later gold standard of the technique, "Babylon 5", where, if you missed an episode or two, you'd struggle to make sense of the plot.

That was partly also its bane, as it started suffering from the congenital disease of shows with a heavy story arc, that the plotlines become so convoluted after a while that even long time viewers have problems keeping up with the twists and turns, and new viewers are completely lost.

When the show ended in April of 1971, it did not simply gurgle down the drain without a trace, which is the fate of most used soap. Fans began collecting audio tracks, reels of film. The show was aired in syndication on other channels. And soon conventions were cropping up, after the manner of Star Trek fans, who also kept the flame alive for their favourite show after the network had long closed the door on the actual series. A small industry of novels and merchandising sprang up to service this market.

Two subsequent attempts were made to revive the show itself. The first, in 1991, ran for 12 full hour episodes, before unfortunate circumstances (being continually preempted and shuffled about on the broadcast schedule, due to the first Gulf War) and (irony of ironies) the costly budget, lead to its cancellation. A pilot for another remake was produced just last year, but failed to get the nod from the network. The odds favour it not being the last attempt.