More accurately, Crossroads got reasonably OK before it was taken off for several months at the end of 2002, then when it came back at the start of 2003 it was dire and died very quickly (with a ridiculous ending).
Same with the reboot of Crossroads which suffered an equally short but highly turbulent ride.
Everyone remembers Eldorado. It’s possibly the most famous ‘flop’ ever. Memories have probably changed over the years though to make it out to be an even bigger flop than it was.
I saw Eldorado when it was repeated on UK Gold back in 2002, it had improved massively by the end, it almost feels a shame they didn't give it more of a chance.
More accurately, Crossroads got reasonably OK before it was taken off for several months at the end of 2002, then when it came back at the start of 2003 it was dire and died very quickly (with a ridiculous ending).
Yeah I really liked the 2001 series, but the other stuff in 2003 was awful!
I always thought they missed a trick by not rebooting Crossroads as a replacement for Heartbeat. Sunday night, retro drama set in the 70s using the original characters but new actors and storylines.
Rebooting Crossroads to replace Home and Away was ridiculous.
More accurately, Crossroads got reasonably OK before it was taken off for several months at the end of 2002, then when it came back at the start of 2003 it was dire and died very quickly (with a ridiculous ending).
It lasted five months. In hindsight it had disaster written all over it. Quite why it received the go ahead will probably be one of life's greatest mysteries.
I always thought they missed a trick by not rebooting Crossroads as a replacement for Heartbeat. Sunday night, retro drama set in the 70s using the original characters but new actors and storylines.
Rebooting Crossroads to replace Home and Away was ridiculous.
Except Heartbeat was still going strong in 2001, generating an average 13 million viewers at that time. Why would they want to replace it? As it turned out Heartbeat was still on the air in 2010, though its spin-off The Royal was tooted in 2003 and lasted eight years.
I was going to say your idea could be used as a spin-off but I not sure that's the right term.
As to Crossroads to replace Home & Away, well it's documented ITV shot themselves well and truly in the foot with that. They lost Home & Away to Channel 5, invoked their "no airings for a year" clause and then didn't have anything to replace it with. Crossroads came along the best part of nine months after Home & Away finished on ITV and they filled the gap with all kinds of weird and random things, in fact ITV didn't confirm the commission until August 2000 and Carlton didn't even start filming Crossroads until November 2000.
The tragic thing about this saga was that ITV knew in February 2000 they were going to lose Home & Away in June but didn't have any suitable soap replacement ready for it for 13 months.
:-(
A former member
STV managed to get in with daily Wheel of fortunes at 17.30 for all of 2001, strangely only Carton and STV stations took this.
STV managed to get in with daily Wheel of fortunes at 17.30 for all of 2001, strangely only Carton and STV stations took this.
Which is hardly surprising because Crossroads went out at 5:05 and eventually succumbed to a painful half-arsed attempt to effectively tack it onto the end of CITV in everything but name. It was only after I think September 2001 the soap moved to 5:30.
Not that this mattered on UTV as their local news sat there in the 5pm hour anyway.
:-(
A former member
Your right. I made a mistake I was talking about 2000 series. but it did so well it can another half year run in 2001
JM
JamesM0984
The reboot of Crossroads has a surprisingly similar tale to Eldorado. It wasn't rushed to TX in the way Eldorado was - as Neil says, the ducks really should have been in a row and ready to go the minute Home & Away came off. However, a hell of a lot of money was invested in the programme and it certainly didn't have an easy ride. First of all, there was huge confusion over who the target audience actually was? Were they going to go for the Home & Away audience (and bear in mind H&A was a far frothier, lightweight "summer-vibe" sort of show than it is today with the River Boys slinging guns all over Summer Bay) or try and hook the audience from 1988 back in? So you had this kind of lurching from teen-focused storylines to more adult, and at times, fairly implausible stuff.
But like Eldorado, whilst some of the adult cast were excellent some of the teens were excruciatingly bad. In the way Dieter (the German windsurfing tutor) was awful in Eldorado, Mandy the chambermaid in Crossroads was particularly woeful. A lot of these were slowly weeded out and when the show came back from a break for the World Cup, like when Corrine Hollingworth took over as Eldorado's showrunner, things at Crossroads became a lot stronger and the storylines and acting much more watchable. But then the show came off air for four months, we had the second reboot which was just bizarre... and how it ever got signed off on is anyone's guess. And again, like Eldorado, Crossroads was pulled by a new incoming channel controller.
In many ways I'd argue Crossroads was more of a flop than Eldorado, which with decent production values I think could be rebooted today.
More accurately, Crossroads got reasonably OK before it was taken off for several months at the end of 2002, then when it came back at the start of 2003 it was dire and died very quickly (with a ridiculous ending).
It lasted five months. In hindsight it had disaster written all over it. Quite why it received the go ahead will probably be one of life's greatest mysteries.
I always thought they missed a trick by not rebooting Crossroads as a replacement for Heartbeat. Sunday night, retro drama set in the 70s using the original characters but new actors and storylines.
Rebooting Crossroads to replace Home and Away was ridiculous.
Except Heartbeat was still going strong in 2001, generating an average 13 million viewers at that time. Why would they want to replace it? As it turned out Heartbeat was still on the air in 2010, though its spin-off The Royal was tooted in 2003 and lasted eight years.
I didn't say anything about it happening in 2001. I meant the general concept of using Crossroads as a retro brand for a retro series, rather than hi-jacking it for a teen soap.
JM
JamesM0984
Night and Day. There's a show practically nobody remembers but was also quite good. Treated badly by ITV though. You look at some of the big US series now and a lot of them are into the alternate timeline distopyian stuff. Maybe Night and Day was just ahead of its time?
