Top 10 Soap Operas Of the 80s We Couldn’t Get Enough Of

What better place to start this top 10 soap operas of the 80s than with Berrenger’s, which probably has a few of you scratching your head. This was set in New York and was about the wealthy Berrenger’s who owned a fancy department store.

Family drama, affairs, and a lust for power were all common themes in this very 80s soap opera. This was made to be similar to other popular soap operas like Dallas and Dynasty, but for whatever reason it never caught on, and after just a few months the show was pulled from the air with an episode that never got shown! To be fair, this had all the makings of a hit 80s soap opera, but they can’t all be winners.

Loving was created by Agnes Nixon, who is perhaps most famous for being the creator of All My Children. Famed soap opera actor Douglas Marland also had a hand in the creation of the show. This one takes place in the great state of Pennsylvania, in the fictional town of Corinth to be exact.

The show was based around the wealthy Alden family (it is an 80s soap opera, it always has to be a wealthy family!) and the various friends and enemies they have in their lives. Loving was actually a pretty consistent ratings hit for ABC for many years until the ratings finally started to dwindle in the 90s, causing the cancelation of the show in 1995. However, a spin-off series called The City would run from 1995 until 1997 in its place.

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Next up on this epic top 10 soap operas of the 80s, we have Capitol, which is one of the more unique soap operas of the decade. Instead of being about a wealthy family from the world of business, Capitol takes place in Washington and is more about political intrigue and the lives of those involved.

There are many interesting characters, but things tend to revolve around the Clegg, Denning, and McCandless families. Clarissa McCandless was a kind and loving woman who was at odds with Myrna Clegg, a very ruthless kind of woman! The two of them had both been friends, but they both loved the same man, Baxter, and this led to a fierce rivalry with Myrna willing to do anything to ruin the McCandless family! Having this kind of classic soap opera drama around the political backdrop of Washington, DC made this a very unique show at the time.

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As the title gives away (would be misleading if it did not!) Santa Barbara takes place in the sun-kissed location of Santa Barbara. The location alone made this a bit different from some of the other top 10 soap operas of the 80s, but what made this such a popular show was the writing.

On the surface this show mainly revolves around the rivalry and drama with a rich family, in this case the Capwell family. However, you also had the Lockridge family as well as two other families in the Andrade and the Perkins families who were not as rich. The show had some fantastic and very witty writing which led to some great storylines and characters that viewers could love and also hate, too.  This is a show that was pretty popular all over the globe and in Russia it would air into the early 00s!

Falcon Crest has everything that you would want in a soap opera: warring rich families wearing fancy clothes, driving fancy cars, and getting into all kinds of trouble. This show was about two families at war, the Channing Family – which is headed by the very tough and ruthless Angela Channing, head of the Falcon Crest Wine Company – and the Gioberti family. Of course, there is romance, betrayal, and a whole lot of skeletons getting pulled out of the closets that are full of very expensive clothes. The fact that Falcon Crest has the lovely wine industry as its backdrop is pretty cool and makes for some great scenery, which is clearly supposed to be Napa Valley.

With its March 1989 original airdate, Generations just managed to make it onto this top 10 soap operas of the 80s list. It’s kind of crazy to think that it took until 1989 to have an African-American family, the Marshalls, as one of the main families in a soap. This is just one of the things that made Generations stand out from the crowd.

The Marshalls were going up against the Whitmore family, who were white, and the show did not shy away from racial tensions at all. The backdrop of the Chicago cosmetics industry led to some cool espionage-style storylines as well as the standard and expected romance, drama, and betrayal you want from a soap opera. A fun bit of trivia about Generations is that many people consider this show to have one of the most epic catfights in soap opera history!

Texas has a bit of an interesting backstory. This is actually a spin-off from Another World, and it features Iris Cory Carrington (Wheeler) from Another World heading to Houston to see her son and ending up staying there and getting into all kinds of drama.

Another World introduced more than a few characters in the run-up to the premiere. The basics of this one are that we have the Wheeler and Bellman families at odds with each other. While it is a spin-off from Another World, the TV company wanted this to be more like Dallas, and that’s why it has the Houston setting, the title of Texas, and why much of the drama and storylines are about the oil industry. For a spin-off, Texas did actually manage to stand on its own two cowboy boot-wearing feet with fun storylines filled with passion and betrayal! 

Ok, so technically Knots Landing being on this top 10 soap operas of the 80s is cheating based on the parameters I set at the start, but this made its debut right at the end of December 1979 so we are just a few days out. Plus some markets may not have gotten it until January 1980 anyway, so my butt is covered!

Anyway, Knots Landing is a spin-off from the very popular Dallas and it took Gary and Valene Ewing out West to LA. The show had a slow start, but it did pick up some real steam and would go on to feature all kinds of crazy storylines featuring, love, lust, betrayal, and even more extreme stuff like kidnapping, assault, murder, and more! This was a show that did not hold back and while it started out as a spin-offs, it well and truly became its own thing and for a while was one of the most watched soap operas in the country! 

Not content with dominating TV screens with The Young and the Restless, William and Phillip Bell created The Bold & The Beautiful, a show that is still running to this day! This did cross over with The Young and the Restless and when that happened, it was a huge deal. What set this show apart from the rest was the LA setting with the beautiful people and all the glitz and glamour you would expect from life in LA in the 1980s. The show mainly revolved around three families, the Forresters, the Logans, and the Spencers, with all kinds of drama ranging from illicit affairs, family drama, cons, and more.

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Do you get much more 80s than Dynasty? This was an easy choice for the number one spot on this top 10 soap operas of the 80s list! This is the show that had Joan Collins shine as the villain Alexis, one of the stand out characters of the 80s that people loved to hate. This is a show about the wealthy Carrington family who are “oil rich” and all of the drama and shenanigans that goes on around them.

This was appointment viewing for many people back in the 80s, and while it was created to be a rival to Dallas, it more than stood on its own. To this day, it is one of the most popular soap operas of all time. It was even brought back with a reboot in 2017 that lasted for a few seasons!