In the world of continuing daytime drama, or "the soaps," Dark Shadows remains an anomaly. Unlike any other day or evening television show, Dark Shadows' increasing popularity over the course of its five year run from 1966 to 1971 led to the creation of two feature films entitled House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows, a hit record album of themes from the show, and a series of 30 novels, comic books, and other paraphernalia—a development unheard of in the world of daytime television. Dark Shadows had unexpectedly evolved from another afternoon soap into a cultural phenomenon and franchise. Indeed, Dark Shadows was in a genre all to itself during this period of twentieth-century television history.

Like other soaps, Dark Shadows dealt with forbidden love and exotic medical conditions. Unlike any other, however, its conflicts tended to extend beyond the everyday material most soaps cover into...