'Peyton Place' -- why so serious?

July 4, 12:39 PMTV on DVD ExaminerSteve Marinucci

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    (Courtesy Shout Factory)

Things look grim, as they usually do, at the start of  "Peyton Place: Part Two", which hits the DVD racks July 14. 

Betty Anderson (Barbara Parkins) has run away from her husband, Rodney Harrington (a young Ryan O'Neal), whom she married because she was having his baby. Meanwhile, Elliot Carson (Tim O'Connor) has just returned after being paroled following an 18-year jail sentence for murdering his wife, which he may or may not have done.

The ABC prime-time soap, which ran from 1964-69, was full of secrets and intertwining plots and subplots. You'd almost need a road map to figure them out. 

Looking at it now, this set, which features 33 black-and-white episodes, seems overwrought. Grimaces and forlorn looks, along with the building violins on the soundtrack, create an atmosphere of perpetual dread.

But that was the way it was on "Peyton Place". It was the stuff of daytime dramas propped up for prime time. The adult TV audience, however, loved it.

"Peyton Place" is no "Desperate Housewives". There wasn't an undertone of comedy here. It's all pretty serious. But the series was a product of a more formal time.

"Peyton Place" is interesting as a relic and for the names it featured during its run -- among them, Mia Farrow and Ryan O'Neal in these episodes;  Mariette Hartley, Leslie Nielsen, before his turn to comedy, and Ruth Warrick, who later became better known as Phoebe Tyler on the ABC daytime soap "All My Children." Among the guest actors is a young Micky Dolenz, later of the Monkees.

As the secrets and emotions are revealed, viewers find what a tangled web they weave. And the smiles are few.

But that was life in "Peyton Place".

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