Passions is an American television soap opera that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1999, to September 7, 2007, and on DirecTV's The 101 Network from September 17, 2007, to August 7, 2008. Created by screenwriter James E. Reilly and produced by NBC Studios, Passions follows the lives, loves and various romantic and paranormal adventures of the residents of Harmony, a small town in New England with many secrets.
Storylines center on the interactions among members of its multi-racial core families: the African American Russells, the white Cranes and Bennetts, and half-Mexican half-Irish Lopez-Fitzgeralds. The series also features supernatural elements, which focus mainly on town witch Tabitha Lenox (Juliet Mills) and her doll-come-to-life, Timmy (Josh Ryan Evans).
NBC cancelled Passions on January 16, 2007. The series was subsequently picked up by DirecTV. The series aired its final episode on NBC on September 7, 2007, with new episodes continuing on DirecTV's 101 Network starting on September 17. In December 2007, just months after picking up the series, DirecTV decided not to renew its contract for Passions, and the studio was subsequently unable to sell the series elsewhere. The final episode was broadcast in August 2008. Passions was the last daytime television soap opera created for American network television until Beyond the Gates premiered on CBS in February 2025.
Series history In the early days of the show, Passions heroine Sheridan Crane is identified as a close friend of Diana, Princess of Wales; soon Sheridan recalls speaking to Diana on the phone immediately before the 1997 car crash in which Diana was killed. Sheridan also has a similar accident in the same Paris tunnel, and speaks to a "guardian Angel Diana" who urges her to fight to survive, which drew considerable controversy. Sheridan later adopts the name Diana after a boating accident that results in amnesia.
The opening days of the show also introduced the Theresa/Ethan/Gwen love triangle that persisted as an ongoing main story line to the very last episode of the series.
For much of the first three to four years of the series, supernatural elements such as witches, warlocks, and closet doors leading to Hell were major plot points, many surrounding the machinations of the centuries-old witch Tabitha Lenox and her doll-brought-to-life sidekick, Timmy—named by Entertainment Weekly as one of their "17 Great Soap Supercouples" in 2008. Tabitha's enemy, and Timmy's adoring puppy love was Charity Standish (Molly Stanton), a saccharine young woman who would regularly become possessed by the "forces of evil."In 2001, HarperEntertainment released Hidden Passions, a tie-in novelization presented as Tabitha's diary, exposing the secrets and pasts of the town's residents. Passions featured a story-line involving Tabitha and Timmy promoting the book, which reached No. 4 on the real-life New York Times Best Seller list and garnered the series two alternative covers of TV Guide in July 2001.
In 2003, Passions submitted an orangutan named BamBam, who had been portraying the recurring role of Precious, for a Daytime Emmy Award. Precious was the non-speaking live-in nurse and caregiver for elderly Edna Wallace, and held an unrequited love for Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald, which was depicted in elaborate fantasy sequences. In early 2004, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which administers the awards, disallowed the entry with the following statement: Our ruling is based on the belief that the Academy must draw a line of distinction between animal characters that aren't capable of speaking parts and human actors whose personal interpretation in character portrayal creates nuance and audience engagement that uniquely qualifies those performers for consideration of television's highest honor.
By 2004, the character's Antonio Lopez-Fitzgerald, Charity Standish, David Hastings, Hank Bennett, John Hastings, Miguel Lopez-Fitzgerald, and Reese Durkee either were written out, or recurring. Introduced were Katherine Crane and Martin Fitzgerald, Valerie Davis—who was later revealed to be Vincent—and the long-awaited on-screen appearance of Alistair Crane. Charity's departure also diminished Tabitha Lenox's prominence, reducing her role largely to observing Harmony's residents through her enchanted bowl. As a result, the show's remaining supernatural elements no longer carried the same weight alongside the more conventional storytelling that had previously defined Passions. In response, the series shifted its focus toward increasingly sensational and outlandish plots. In summer 2005, the prominent character Simone Russell came out as gay; Passions made daytime history by being the first serial to show two women—Simone and love interest Rae Thomas—in bed making love. In 2007, it was revealed that longtime hero Chad Harris-Crane was cheating on his wife with another man. This was also a daytime first, with the men portrayed in bed together, committing—albeit unknowingly—incest.Chad was the half-uncle of his lover Vincent, who first had an affair with Chad, as his alter ego Valerie Davis. Passions also portrayed Vincent as an intersex person who became pregnant with his own father's son.
Nearly seven years after the debut of Passions on July 5, 1999, the NBC-owned Sci Fi Channel began airing the series from its first episode starting February 13, 2006. Due to low ratings, the reruns were taken off the air as of May 25, 2006. On August 15, 2006, Passions became the first daytime drama to make full episodes available for download and purchase from the digital music store iTunes. On November 6, 2006, the show also became the first daytime drama to make full episodes available for free viewing via streaming on NBC.com.
Though plagued since its inception by low overall Nielsen ratings, Passions was historically top-rated in key demographics, namely the female 12-to-17 demographic; Passions and Days of Our Lives usually occupied the top two positions among all soaps in this age group.
Move to DirecTV On January 17, 2007, NBC announced that it would not renew Passions for a ninth season, in order to accommodate a planned expansion of its morning news and talk show Today to a fourth hour. NBC reclaimed the program's hour-long slot in order to extend Today into the 10:00 am ET hour, rather than acquiring an extra hour of programming time already allocated to its stations for syndicated or local programs. NBC soon began shopping the series to other networks. In April 2007, satellite television provider DirecTV reached an agreement with NBCUniversal Television Studio to acquire the exclusive broadcast rights to Passions, with most of the serial's principal cast members staying on."Passions: Who Won't Survive the Move to DirecTV?" - TV SeriesFinale.com , May 24, 2007
Ahead of the move from NBC to DirecTV, the call-in aftershow Passions Live, hosted by Eric Martsolf (who succeeded original cast member Travis Schuldt as Ethan Winthrop in 2002), premiered on DirecTV's general entertainment network The 101 in August 2007, making Passions the first (and only) American soap opera to ever have a live talk show. Airing weekly on Thursday nights until October 2007 and streamed simultaneously on NBC.com's official Passions website, the show gave fans the chance to call into the program and interact live with cast members from the soap. Passions ended its NBC run after eight seasons on September 7, 2007, leaving Days of Our Lives as the network's lone remaining soap opera and conventional daytime program (until it was moved to the co-owned Peacock streaming service in September 2022 to accommodate the afternoon newscast NBC News Daily); new episodes subsequently began airing on The 101 ten days later on September 17, becoming the first (and , only) American daytime network soap opera to move their first-run episodes to a linear subscription television service.
With the move to The 101, episodes were reduced to four days a week, airing Monday–Thursday at 2:00 pm ET/11 am PT (retaining the timeslot it had held since its NBC debut), with repeats airing later in the day and on weekends. NBC.com continued to maintain Passions official website after the series moved over to DirecTV; however, first-run episodes were no longer made available to stream for free on NBC's website or for purchase at iTunes. Initially, new episodes were supposed to air exclusively on DirecTV after the soap concluded its run on NBC; however, on September 27, 2007, DirecTV announced it would provide viewers who were not already DirecTV subscribers an "All Access Pass to Passions" to stream all newer episodes on NBC.com after their initial airing on The 101 for a monthly fee., September 27, 2007 This subscription offering launched on October 1, 2007, originally priced at $19.99 per month (later reduced to $14.99 when Passions cut its weekly schedule from four episodes to three). In another first for the soap opera genre, episodes airing on The 101 included an interactive feature allowing viewers to answer a special Passions trivia question that appeared on-screen as a pop-up using their remote control.
On December 10, 2007, Variety magazine and various cast members"Passions Canceled Again?" Soap Opera Digest. January 1, 2008, Vol. 33 No. 1. confirmed that DirecTV had decided not to renew Passions for a tenth season, but extended its existing order to include 52 additional episodes to be taped through March 2008. In January 2008, DirecTV reduced the show's schedule to three episodes per week, airing Monday through Wednesday. Universal Media Studios wrapped up production of Passions on March 28, 2008. As confirmed by original cast member McKenzie Westmore (Sheridan Crane), the cast and crew were told at the wrap party that efforts to find a new outlet had failed and that the show's cancellation was final."Passions: The Soap is Really Over This Time" - TVSeriesFinale.com, March 31, 2007 New episodes continued to air on The 101 until August 7, 2008, when Passions ended its nine-season run. Though Passions had been the highest-rated original program on DirecTV's The 101, it was reported that the network had failed to meet the projected number of new subscribers they had hoped to attract with the series.