TV shows are starting to produce and air again. For the most part, it looks like reality/game show stuff right now but a few regular shows are shooting. Friday I checked out the soap opera that has started airing these episodes to see how they were handling things.
I recorded the Bold and the Beautiful. I’ve never seen it but I’m familiar with how soap operas work. And this was very strange. All the characters were at least 6 feet apart at all times. There were never more than 3 in a scene. They had conversations from across the room which meant one-shots changing back and forth to follow the conversation. Maybe half the conversations were on the phone. I don’t see how anyone can watch this. Maybe it would have been different if I was invested in the storylines but I thought it was boring and looked uncomfortable for the actors. And you can’t have soap operas without slapping and kissing! I don’t see how they can make this work.
So has anyone else seen other shows from the post-shutdown era?
I heard soaps were going to use realistic-looking mannequins for some love scenes. It sounded like a sketch SNL did in their last episode before their social distanced ones, where a soap was being filmed, and they did things like put plastic between actors making out, or an arm would appear from off camera to go around someone’s shoulder that was clearly fake.
I know that The Goldbergs is back into production, with a view towards being back on TVs at some point in October. I know this because I follow a couple of the actors on Twitter. One showed a pic of herself dressed head to toe in PPE, including a face shield. She intimated that everyone on the set is in PPE unless they’re shooting a scene and the cameras are rolling.
I’m curious as to how (or if) shows will address the pandemic as part of their scripts, like characters wearing masks when they go out in public, going forward. But of course that’s a non-issue in a period show like The Goldbergs.
The producers of The Conners have said that the pandemic will be a part of the show’s story line. They even put out publicity pics of the cast in their masks.