It's just a gothic soap — with vampires, werewolves, zombies, magic users, time travel...
Chris: It just cracks me up that Lex Luthor’s path to sinister corporate super-villain world domination begins with deciding how much money to allocate for traffic lights in Granville.
David: I bet we won’t even see Superman fly or wear a costume when this is over; the dramatic final shot will be Lois and Clark closing on a mortgage.
David: I bet we won’t even see Superman fly or wear a costume when this is over; the dramatic final shot will be Lois and Clark closing on a mortgage.
— Chris Sims and David Uzumeri on
Smallville ("Lexmas")
Smallville ("Lexmas")
A continuing series focusing on the personal relationships between several characters, usually following the form of the traditional daytime Soap Opera or Prime Time Soap. The difference is that the characters live in a world in which supernatural events and beings are commonplace, and as such the characters may often come into contact with vampires, ghosts, witches, etc. In some cases, the show's characters are themselves supernatural beings.
The original supernatural soap was ABC's daytime drama Dark Shadows, although the form was perhaps perfected by Joss Whedon's cult hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel. The New '10s has seen a resurgence in these types of shows aimed at the young adult market, merging the format with Teen Drama.
Supernatural Soap Opera is a subgenre of Urban Fantasy and Supernatural Fiction. Compare Fantastic Comedy.
Examples:
Literature
- Harry Potter would occasionally stray in this direction, particularly in the sixth book - where there was a lot of emphasis on Harry's teen life.
- The Red Necklace
- Tales of Elethiya
- Twilight
- The Legend of the Ice People
Live Action TV
- Amaya
- American Gothic (1995)
- American Horror Story
- Arrowverse
- Being Human (UK)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- The Bureau of Magical Things
- Carnivàle
- Charmed (1998)
- Dark Shadows
- Dead Like Me
- Guardian: The Lonely and Great God
- Haven
- Hemlock Grove
- H₂O: Just Add Water
- Kamen Rider Kiva
- Kindred: The Embraced, a short-lived soap based on the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG.
- Kyle XY (more of Sci-Fi, though).
- Le Portrait de Petite Cossette (Granted, it may be a 3 episode OVA, but...)
- Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure
- Night and Day plays constantly at the edges of this. While the supernatural elements - ghosts, monsters, vampirism, angels, demonic possession - aren't vital drivers of the ongoing plot, and could often be considered as existing within characters' imaginations and/or symbolic rather than literal, the ambiguous presentation means they can't easily be dismissed as such.
- Once Upon a Time
- Part of Me
- Passions
- Point Pleasant
- Port Charles
- Pushing Daisies
- Roswell
- Round the Twist is this for kids, although the soap elements are either low key or pervasive depending on the season and episode.
- Scryer's Gulch
- The Secret Circle
- Smallville
- Spirited
- Split
- Strange Paradise
- Supernatural
- Teen Wolf
- True Blood
- Twin Peaks
- V (1983) — and even didn't disguise the fact, with veteran soap actors playing the villains, Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, and so on.
- The Vampire Diaries Universe
- Vampire Prosecutor
- Wonderfalls
- Surprisingly, there have been some Latin Soap Operas (known as Telenovelas) in this genre, like "La otra mitad del sol", "La mujer en el espejo", "Vampi" and "El voyagem", among others.
- La Otra Mitad Del Sol (The Other Half of the Sun) was about two murdered lovers meeting again years later after reincarnating.
- La Mujer En El Espejo (The Woman In The Mirror) is about a homely woman who uses a magical mirror to become beautiful- the problem being, normal mirrors still show her true appearance.
- Vampi, as the name clearly indicates, revolved around vampires, more precisely a model/singer turned vampire who goes to live in a small town as part of her attempts to free herself of her sire and his own attempts to claim her.
- El Clon is about a rich man who pays to have a clone "son" of himself made. However this Telenovela is better remembered for its extensive use of Arabic cultural trappings.
- Victorinos has a psychic predict that three men born on the same day, all named Victorino, would meet some day- and one of them would then die. The novela follows their individual lives (which range from decent to criminal) until the day they meet, with the audience left to guess which one would die.
- Aurora is about a woman who was put in suspended animation to save her life, and wakes up 20 years later, to find that the man she loves is now married, and her daughter is now a grown woman.
- Simplemente Rita was a rare animated version of a Telenovela, which operated on Cartoon Physics.
- De Oro Puro (Of Pure Gold) is a telenovela about an inmortal woman who had a daughter with the power of premonition.
Web Original
- Carmilla the Series.
- Forever Sucks
- Last Life
- Some episodes of Welcome to Night Vale that focus more on Cecil's personal life, especially his relationship with Carlos.
- The webcomic Selkie features a mysterious race of amphibian humanoids (mainly the titular Selkie), but is mostly about the drama and struggles of secret relatives, bullying, friendships, wacky plans going awry, betrayals, and forgiveness. Several characters In-Universe compare the plot to the Soap Opera genre.
