(Found at 4:30pm on Channel Ten, every day of the week). A lot in my life has changed in that period, but Bold has always been there, consistent in its melodrama. I’ve watched it steadily now for over 20 years. The Bold and The Beautiful, though, has always been “my” show. I used to watch Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless and Passions during school holidays or when home sick. I have been a soap viewer since I was 12. It kept me company during the long, long days of last year’s second lockdown in Melbourne: one reliable bright spot in a time that was anything but.įreud, Nietzsche, Paglia, Fanon: our expert guide to the books of The White Lotus This plotline kicked off a narrative trajectory (involving mistaken identity, an unplanned pregnancy, an altered paternity test and a wrongful arrest) that ultimately ended with Steffy and Finn’s wedding.
The mannequins became a cult hit, ending up with a plotline of their own featuring troubled fashion designer Thomas Forrester (Matthew Atkinson), who began to hallucinate that a mannequin designed to look like the woman he was in love with actually became her. One kiss between Carter Walton (Lawrence Saint-Victor) and Zoe Buckingham (Kiara Barnes), where Zoe was strangely rigid, went viral. In other instances, actors kissed mannequins. When the script called for Steffy and Finn to kiss, for instance, Novlan’s actual wife, actor Kayla Ewell stepped into Steffy’s shoes, with the scenes shot from behind. The show came up with innovative solutions such as body doubles. How do you make a soap opera without kissing? This presented problems, because soaps revolve around romance. On camera, actors were unmasked but maintained strict social distancing. Scenes featuring only one or two actors, rather than ensembles, became commonplace. Strict COVID guidelines included regular testing and mandatory masks and face shields off camera.
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In June that year, The Bold and The Beautiful was the first US network TV drama to resume shooting.
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, American television production shut down. Rather, because for almost the entire trajectory of their characters’ romance, Wood and Novlan were not permitted to touch. Not because Finn’s villainous, absent birth mother was about to leap from the shadows and reveal herself (that’s par for the course). It was an unusual wedding for a soap opera. In The Bold and The Beautiful last week, Steffy Forrester (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) married Dr John “Finn” Finnegan (Tanner Novlan).
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In a new series, our writers nominate the TV series keeping them entertained during a time of COVID.