It’s so rare, but so welcome, to find the hardest working people and the hardest working genre getting some love from the mainstream press.  Now, next week’s upcoming double issue of TV Guide Magazine will feature all four daytime dramas and some of their current iconic couples on the cover!

The covers are a special edition and four different versions went to print.  Inside the magazine details some previews from the head writers and EP’s of the series as well of what’s to come in Genoa City, Port Charles, Los Angeles, and Salem.  Look for the edition to hit newsstands tomorrow on Thursday, August 12th.

The Bold and the Beautiful cover features Thorsten Kaye and Denise Richards as Ridge and Shauna.  Days of our Lives is represented by John and Marlena, played by Drake Hogesytn and Deidre Hall.

Meanwhile, The Young and the Restless has Victor and Nikki, played by Eric Braeden and Melody Thomas Scott, and General Hospital has Maurice Benard and Laura Wright as Sonny and Carly,

The TV Guide Magazine double issue dates are August 17th-30th.

As fans of the soaps know, Y&R returned with new-episodes this Monday, B&B starred airing new ones a few backs, GH was back last week, and DAYS had new episodes in the bank till mid-October and is set to return to taping September 1.

In addition, it should be noted that The Bold and the Beautiful was the first American broadcast television show that went back into production during the coronavirus pandemic.

So, glad to see the soaps getting these collectible covers? Comment below.

This week, General Hospital’s Finola Hughes (Anna) and some very good friends and acting partners debuted in a new IGTV series, directed by Hughes amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s a thriller! What else would we expect from the woman who plays super spy Anna Devane on the ABC daytime drama series.

The IGTV (Instagam’s longer video application) series is called, Enter Exit, and there are 11 episodes, and the first one dropped on Monday.  It is  written by TV scribe Matt Boren, and also stars some of Port Charles’ longtime favorites that include: Ian Buchanan (Ex-Duke), Brooklyn Rae Silzer (Emma) and Marc Anthony Samuel (Felix).

Hughes told SOD how she was inspired to come up with the concept for the show:  “I started to think about, if you’re in lockdown, what would be a narrative where you could act in a vacuum, basically? I first started thinking about what my character would be — a retired (government) agent. And then there’s some reason that I’m retired. And I started to think about stationary shots and walking into your closeup and all those kinds of things. I left (the rest) with Matt; it was basically, ‘Whatever he writes, we’ll do.’ And I just sort of concentrated on how, feasibly, we could do it.”’

Boren, who has been an ardent viewer of GH from its hey day, shared on working off Hughes seeds of an idea to what Enter Exit is about: “In a sense, it’s a local detective thriller that starts out small — and understandably so as season one takes place during the pandemic. However, what we seed throughout these first 11 mini-episodes hints at a show that longs to be on a much larger, more global scale. We were absolutely inspired by ’80s GH — the WSB, the espionage and larger than life stories that were so thrilling, and through Devane/Scorpio/Lavery/Donnelly/Jones, so grounded. Throw that in with some Killing Eve, X-Files and (this will make sense down the line) Stranger Things, and you have a recipe that might be pages away in our cookbook.”

Now check out episode 1 below featuring Hughes and Silzer and make sure to follow Finola’s IG account for all-new installments of Enter Exit.

So, what do you think about the concept of the series? Excited to see more? Let us know via the comment section.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

#EnterExit Cast; @ian.buchanan @brooklynraesilzer Writer; @mattboren Director Photography; @eunuch_b0y Music; @sayzar_mareuh Art; @landofgal Director; me

A post shared by finola hughes (@finolafilona) on Aug 10, 2020 at 4:04pm PDT

Two daytime vets in two very opposing types of storylines delivered emotional and riveting work during their scenes.  First on General Hospital, Maurice Benard (Sonny) in yet another stellar knockout performance in the Alzheimer’s storyline; showed the anguish and pain of a son trying to come to terms with his father’s ultimate fate.

This week saw Sonny originally deciding to try to prolong Mike’s (Max Gail) life by having him placed on a feeding tube, but soon after seeing the fate of Yvonne, another Alzheimer’s patient, and a talk with Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst), Sonny changed course, and did what’s best for Mike, not for himself, and decided to let his father die with dignity and with as least suffering as possible.

We don’t think there could have been a dry eye in the house when Sonny visited Mike’s hospital bedside, and told him that it’s OK for his dad to let go, and not have to stick around for him.  Max Gail, as per usual, was also so touching in these scenes.

Benard did not overplay a beat, and for anyone who has had a parent die of this dreadful disease, you could relate to what Sonny went through in the more than capable hands of this two-time Daytime Emmy winner.

Over on Days of our Lives, what a return for Kassie DePaiva in her role as Eve Donovan! This time, she has come back unhinged and at an emotional rock bottom, so much so that she had abducted Ben Weston (Rob Scott Wilson), had him taken to an abandoned warehouse, strapped him up, tortured him with an assist from Dr. Rolf’s protege, Vincent (Michael Teh), and came up with this twisted plot to have Ben turn back into the “necktie serial killer” and kill his bride, Ciara (Victoria Konefal).

Why, you say? Well, because Eve’s daughter, Paige was one of Ben’s victims and it has been eating Eve alive this whole time. She is a mama grieving for her daughter so deeply that she can’t understand why Paige is dead and he is left on earth to roam around free and find love and happiness… and we find out she was gutted when Ben got a last-minute reprieve when he was recently sentenced to death by lethal injection.

DePaiva played this arc of Eve’s story as a soapalicious villain, but when you really deconstruct it, Eve is just in so much pain… and all of that came through even in the darkest of scenes.  And … there is yet more to come!

Kudos to Maurice and Kassie for being named Michael Fairman TV’s “Power Performances of the Week”.

So, do you agree with our picks for Maurice and Kassie? What did you think of their work? Comment below.