Dark
Shadows
Gothic Soap
Opera
Aired 1966-71, syndicated Sci Fi Channel
Primary Characters
Barnabas Collins -- A 200-year-old
reluctant
vampire seeking a cure for his curse.
Angelique -- The witch who cursed
Barnabas
and follows him throughout the centuries.
Quentin Collins -- A man cursed first
with lycanthropism and then with immortality.
Victoria Winters -- A governess at
Collinwood.
Maggie Evans -- A waitress who later
becomes
Collinwood's governess.
Nicholas Blair -- A warlock with evil
designs on Collinwood.
Elizabeth Stoddard -- The matriarch of
the Collins family.
Carolyn Stoddard -- Elizabeth's
daughter.
Dr. Julia Hoffman -- A physician who
discovers
Barnabas' secret and seeks to cure him.
. . . . . . ....and
far
too many more to list!
Premise
Dark Shadows follows the ghostly
goings-on
at Collinwood, a haunted estate in rural Maine where supernatural
creatures
abound, from spirits and wraiths to vampires, werewolves and
zombies!
Central to the story is Barnabas, the unwilling vampire who wants
to be
human and who enlists the aid of Dr. Julia Hoffman in that quest.
Nothing on television before or since has
ever
been quite like Dark Shadows. Throngs of us really
did
run home from school every day to watch this landmark gothic
serial and
thrill to the exploits of its very unusual hero -- a
sympathetic, good-guy
vampire. Employing such devices as time-travel and
"parallel time,"
DS spanned centuries, explored other dimensions and captivated
us through
it all.
