On Monday, just about the time twilight settled across the land, thousands of households lived their worst nightmare – a world without the addictive Days Of Our Lives.
The long-running television series, which started back in the 1970s, fell victim to a delay in shipment, according to the banner plastered across the screen at the time the show should have been starting.
It was a blow for those who clear an hour each day from 6 p.m. to follow the antics of Marlena Evans, Alice Horton and company. One suggestion on Facebook, where the soap opera has a page, was a peaceful protest outside CBC.
Since the news broke the old, young and now the restless have been venting on the social media, calling up their friends or complaining at work. Most fans were bewildered that a series which started in the United States in the mid-1960s reached Barbados more than a decade later and is at least 12 years behind the current series in America, could still be late arriving.
This is not the first time that Days of Our Lives has been interrupted but the disruption seemed always to have a major impact on viewers who, for decades, have been tuning in each weekday to the reassuring voice of MacDonald Carey announcing, “like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives”.
With that Days’ fans were propelled into a riveting storyline centred on the Horton family of Salem.
Children were shushed or put to bed, meals consumed and household work completed because there were to be no distractions. But that was not always the case and the intrusive nature of the show into the real lives of Barbadians was captured, satirically, in a MADD calypso composition about domestic problems created by women’s obsession with characters Mickey, Bill, Doug and Julie.
Barbadians were first introduced to the soap opera when the Horton family, led by patriarch Dr Tom Horton and wife Alice, began its long-running storyline involving the rape of their son Mickey Horton’s wife Laura by Mickey’s brother Bill. Years later the saga of a love triangle, between lounge singer Doug Williams, and Addie Horton and Addie’s daughter Julie took over.
The naked immorality portrayed in the show outraged some local leaders in the 1980s who found the titillating storyline offensive to the Barbadian Christian society and called for it to be banned. The degree of Days’ popularity began to be reflected in discussions on call-in programmes, at the bus stop, in offices, neighbourhoods and even in schools.
The soap veered into the supernatural during the 1990s, the point at which the local show is now stalled with today’s characters including the Deveraux and Brady clans.
“I love Days, I just love it,” one elderly woman Una, who confessed to missing her daily TV treat, said.
Her evenings are now spent listening to the radio and trying to understand how the series that is so far behind could be affected by late shipments.
“I don’t really like Neighbours or the Bold (And The Beautiful). I watch a bit but I’m not a big follower,” she said.
More than 6 200 people have clicked “like” for the show’s Facebook page.
Other comments on the fan club page included: “Thinking of staging a peaceful protest outside CBC. Who wid me?” asked Andrea.
But there were others who were not so intrigued by the soap’s plot and ridiculed some of its episodes.
“Jack is now Flash. From sleeping to awake and fully dressed along with Jennifer and Abigail all through a bathroom window, into a car and back comfortably on the road in the short time it took for the FBI agents to walk/run to their room,” sarcastically wrote a discerning fan of one episode.
The absence of the daily dose of Days left fan Alicia feeling annoyed and she posted her comments with the accompanying emoticon.
She wrote “Sigh, so Days Of Our Lives finish. On hiatus. This is just so wrong – feeling annoyed. Days’ is just a toned down Dallas, Knots Landing, Dynasty and Falcon Crest.”
Days’ fans have also been blasting critics who say the show should be banned, accusing them of secretly watching that and other soaps.