As much as it seems that the daytime soap opera is on life support, it’s still alive and well on CBS. Two of the highest-rated daytime series — The Young And The Restless and The Bold And The Beautiful — continue their decades-long runs on the Eye network, and they’re confident enough in the genre that they’ve decided to premiere the first new daytime network soap in 26 years.
Opening Shot: To the strains of “The Best Of My Love,” a black Mercedes drives up to the gates of the Fairmont Crest Country Club. The woman driving the car presses a button and the gate opens.
The Gist: The Duprees are a prominent family in the gated community of Fairmont, Maryland, a Washington, DC suburb and in a county with one of the most affluent Black populations in the country. At the country club, the woman getting out of the car, Nicole Dupree Richardson (Daphnée Duplaix), is there to meet her mother, Anita Dupree (Tamara Tunie). There, they sit at their reserved table and try to figure out why Nicole’s sister, Danielle “Dani” Dupree (Karla Mosley) is late.
Dani is still at home, staring at a couple of coffee mugs, which she hurls across her kitchen in anger. She’s still bitter over her ex-husband, Bill Hamilton (Timon Kyle Durrett), getting engaged to Hayley Lawson (Marquita Goings), who was a friend of her older daughter, Naomi Hamilton Hawthorne (Arielle Prepetit). She’s pissed and embarrassed that they’re actually getting married at the country club. Her friend Vanessa McBride (Lauren Buglioli) comes over and reminds her that she’s never cared what other people think, and reminds her of “the Dupree of it all,” which means that their family’s prominence usually outweighs any perceived slights.
Naomi is married to Jacob Hawthorne (Jibre Hordges), a DC police detective. Dani’s younger daughter, Chelsea Hamilton (RhonniRose Mantilla), is a model whose career Dani still manages, though she wants to break free of her mom’s control.
In the meantime, we see the patriarch of the family, Vernon Dupree (Clifton Davis), a former senator and civil rights activist, meet at the local diner with his grandson Martin Richardson (Brandon Clayborn), a freshman in Congress. Also in the meantime, Ashley Morgan (Jen Jacob) is about to start her first day as a nurse in a DC hospital, and her boyfriend Derek Baldwin (Ben Gavin), expresses his feelings about her and her new job in over-the-top ways. When Andre Richardson (Sean Freeman), the nephew of Nicole’s husband Ted Richardson (Maurice Johnson), comes to the hospital scounting locations for a photo shoot, there is chemistry between him and Ashley that suggests a history between them.
As the Duprees gather at the country club, Vanessa informs them that Bill and Hayley have bought a house in Fairmont. To Dani, that means war.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Beyond The Gates fits in well with CBS’ venerable soaps The Young Ana The Restless and The Bold And The Beautiful.
Our Take: Created by Michele Val Jean, Beyond the Gates is the first new daytime network soap since Passions in 1999 and the first featuring a mainly Black cast since Generations, which ran from 1989-91. Val Jean’s first job was on Generations and she’s spent her career writing daytime soaps, so she knows the rhythms of the soap world and how to get viewers’ attention.
So, as far as the format is concerned, Beyond The Gates isn’t breaking any new ground. It’s a classic daytime soap: Scenes chopped into two-to-three-minute bits, lots of closeups, the stark style and lighting reminicent of the days of video tape, a run-and-gun shooting style where actors may stumble over dialogue or blocking may not be perfect. Anyone who’s a soap fan will definitely feel comfortable with the style.
There’s a ton of clumsy exposition in the first episode, but that feels almost necessary, given the fact that we need to be introduced to most of this massive cast in a short 37-minute runtime. We don’t get to meet everyone, and the connections between, say, Ashley and the rest of the Dupree family aren’t fully examined. But when you’re shooting five shows a week, you need to stretch some twists and plot points as long as you possibly can.
Of course, there needs to be some over-the-top characters and reactions, and most fo that is left to Kara Mosley as Dani. The character sets the tone within the show’s first five minutes by hurling not one, but two coffee mugs in frustration over what’s going on with her ex and her daughter’s former friend Hayley. She spends most of the first episode in a simmering rage, with a face to match, and ends it giving Hayley what is probably the first of many slaps we’ll see on this show.
The scene with Vernon and his grandson Martin in the diner does set an expectation that Val Jean will bring Black history into play on this show, and not make the Duprees some generic rich family; a diner customer approaches Vernon and Martin and gives the elder Dupree her appreciation for what he did for “the movement”, as well as his service as a U.S. senator. What we hope is that we see tidbits like this on a regular basis, to remind the audience of where families like the Duprees came from.
That being said, Dani is basically the only character that got to do anything else but spew exposition in the first episode, so Val Jean and her writers will need to get moving to make the rest of the Duprees more than just talking heads. But again, this is the first of what will be at least a couple of hundred episodes for the show’s first year, so the staff has a lot of time to shape and develop these characters and stories.
Sex and Skin: Naomi and Jacob have some morning loving while sexy music plays, but it’s network soap opera sex — lots of under-covers movement.
Parting Shot: After Dani slaps the hell out of Hayley, the Duprees stare her down as they walk out of the bar at the country club. Then a person familiar with fans of the Bravoverse turns around and says to Dani, “Welcome to Fairmont Crest.”
Sleeper Star: We want to see both Clifton Davis and Tamara Tunie get real storylines, and not just be the advice-dispensing patriarch and matriarch of the Dupree family.
Most Pilot-y Line: The slap is a bit clumsily edited. But it’s hard to cite a pilot-y line in a daytime soap, which is full of overacting and silly lines.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While Beyond The Gates isn’t reinventing the daytime soap formula, just the idea that we’re being introduced to a new set of characters, and we’re getting a soap that features and affluent and powerful Black family, is more than enough to get us to keep watching.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.