Long running daytime soap, set in the fictional city of Monticello, that mixed personal dramas with crime and mystery storylines. The show’s protagonist was Mike Karr, who progressed from police officer to DA over the course of the show’s run (the character was played by three different actors across 28 years). He was surrounded by a motley crew of police officers, lawyers, journalists and criminals, with storylines focusing on murder, cults, terrorist organisations and randomly, a killer puppet.
Many stars did a stint on the show when they were starting out, including John Travolta, Julianne Moore, Lori Loughlin, Marcia Cross and Frances Fisher. Its late afternoon timeslot and focus on crime stories, made the show popular with male viewers, something of an anomaly among daytime soap audiences of the time. There’s quite a lot of the show’s latter years out there and having watched an arc from 1979-80, I have to say that while very low budget, it’s really good. Rarely gets a mention these days as it was last seen in syndication back in the 80’s/90’s.