The main players in "The Yellow Rose". In back from left are David Soul; Edward Albert; and Sam Elliott' while in front from left are Cybill Shepherd and Susan Anspach. |
Well it did miss. It was called “The Yellow Rose”, and it lasted a season on NBC, and CTV on peasant vision. Debuting in 1983 amid a sea of
other night-time dramas such as “Dallas”, “Dynasty”, “Knot’s Landing”, and
“Falcon Crest”, it just didn’t seem to resonate with viewers. NBC was
perpetually looking for a soap opera to match the success of all these others,
but never really found it. “Flamingo Road” fell apart, and “The Yellow Rose”
failed too.
I had forgotten all about it, until I sat down in the public library
recently and heard someone asking about signing it out of the library. It was not
surprising the patron was informed it was not on DVD or anywhere else for that
matter. After all, the show only lasted a handful of
episodes, 22 in total.
So much promise
CTV hyped “The Yellow Rose” pretty heavily. I always remember one
commercial where David Soul’s character Roy Champion was looking intense and
said to Sam Elliott’s character Chance McKenzie, “ You come on the Rose,
you’re under my law.”
As I said it had all the makings of a hit, but fizzled, and was
cancelled after one season. NBC did re-broadcast it in the summer of 1990,
along with “Bret Maverick”, when there was some sort of writers’ strike on.
Parting thoughts
“The Yellow Rose" was on at a time when NBC floundered in third place in the ratings,
among three TV networks, and showed no signs of improving. The network had a
revolving door of shows that were a victim variously of bad writing, bad
acting, bad production, and sometimes just bad timing. “The Yellow Rose” falls
somewhere in the middle of all this.
It also fell victim to the rush of networks to capitalize on the
popularity of night-time dramas, or soap operas. Many were either rushed into
production, or at least looked like it, with premises that just didn’t resonate
with audiences.
Quite frankly, I was surprised anyone would remember "The Yellow Rose", like that lady
in the library did. Yet, when I started to think about “The Yellow Rose”, I
wondered what it would be like to see it 30 years later. After all, it did
have an amazing cast.
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