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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 Lenox (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.
The opening days of the show also introduced the Theresa/Ethan Winthrop/Gwen Hotchkiss 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 , , 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 Lenox—named by Entertainment Weekly as one of their "17 Great Soap " in 2008. 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.
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 Clarkson 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 Syfy 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 Store. On November 6, 2006, the show also became the first daytime drama to make full episodes available for free viewing via streaming media 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.
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 a 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.
The opening title sequence used since the show's premiere in 1999 features shots of the city of Harmony and its landmarks (actually the real-life town of Camden, Maine). The sequence opens and closes with the show's logo in an italic typeface and in an Arial Black typeface in generic caps posted in front of the cursive form of the title. The opening theme is sometimes shortened to the last two verses to fit in extra scene time.
While Passions was never a big hit in household ratings, the show was a powerhouse in the younger-skewing demographics. For its entire NBC run, it ranked as the No. 1 soap among girls aged 12 to 17 and women aged 18 to 24. The show also ranked at No. 2 among women aged 18 to 34, and even overtook fellow NBC soap Days of Our Lives for a short period during the 2004–05 season. In the crucial 18-to-49 demographic, Passions usually ranked No. 7, ahead of CBS soaps As the World Turns and Guiding Light. The highest ranking Passions ever achieved in the 18-to-49 demographic was fourth place in November 2002 and once again in January 2007.
During its NBC run, Passions ran for 60 minutes every weekday (excluding some holidays). For its final season on NBC (2006–07), episodes were available online at NBC.com for free viewing and for purchase on iTunes. After the move to DirecTV, the schedule was shortened to four days a week (Monday through Thursday) plus weekend marathon encores, then later three days a week (Monday through Wednesday) starting in January 2008 until the finale. Initially, DirecTV episodes were only available on its own exclusive channel; later they were made available for a paid subscription fee at NBC.com.
By 2001, Michael Logan of TV Guide remarked of Passions, "There hasn't been this sort of buzz about a soap since the Luke and Laura days on General Hospital...It's unlike anything else out there. There's a real sense of hipness to it."
Craig Tomashoff of The New York Times praised the campy storylines by calling Passions the " Twin Peaks of daytime": "It's a staggeringly psychotic blend of supernatural thriller, melodramatic soap opera and situation comedy, featuring acting that would make a pro wrestler blush. I'm never quite sure whether this is a laughing at or a laughing with kind of show; either way, I'm still laughing."
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Professional basketball player Robert Horry appeared as himself in 1999, as did singer Mýa in 2003 and the band Scissor Sisters in 2007. Judge Mablean Ephriam also portrayed herself in a 2003 fantasy sequence in which the character T. C. and Eve Russell go on the Divorce Court television program.
The band Scissor Sisters appeared on two February 2007 episodes and performed two songs from their Ta-Dah album: "Land of a Thousand Words" on February 8 and "I Don't Feel Like Dancin" on February 9.
Juliet Mills' daughter Melissa Caulfield appeared in 1999 and 2005 as Nanny Phoebe Figalilly, a role played by Mills in the sitcom Nanny and the Professor. Gabby Tamargo, daughter of Eva Tamargo, portrayed a young version of the elder Tamargo's character, Pilar Lopez-Fitzgerald, in 2008.
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