While doing my research into soap operas and their characters, in this case information... information... information about one of my favorite characters, Sally Spectra of 'The Bold & The Beautiful', I stumbled across a reference to a Dutch comedy show which spoofed a very popular soap opera. Darlene Conley appeared on that comedy show as her character of Sally Spectra. One day I will go into that aspect but for now I'm going to focus on the soap opera and its spoof.
From Wikipedia:
'Goede tijden, slechte tijden' ('Good times, bad times'), also known as GTST or simply 'Goede Tijden', is the longest-running Dutch soap opera, which began on 1 October 1990 on RTL4. The programme was the first daily soap in the Netherlands. The soap is produced by Joop van den Ende and to date over 5,000 episodes have been broadcast. It was inspired by the Australian soap 'The Restless Years', although it started following its own course during the third season. GTST is broadcast Monday to Friday at 20:00. Around 1.5 million viewers watch each episode. It is the highest rated soap opera in the Netherlands.
The soap mainly revolves around the lives of the families Alberts, Sanders, De Jong, Van Houten and Bouwhuis. It all takes place in the fictional town of Meerdijk. Like any other soap, marriage, divorce, kidnapping and business are a few of the ingredients of GTST, although in recent years, GTST has become known for writing and producing more controversial storylines. GTST is also known for having a summer break each year, ending a season sometime in June with a cliffhanger, only to resume three months later in September. Although the early cliffhangers often revolved around family drama, later cliffhangers have often revolved around disasters and unexpected twists.
Many former actors who once were part of the cast are now well known in the Netherlands and Europe, such as Katja Schuurman, Reinout Oerlemans and Antonie Kamerling (who, in spite of a successful career as an actor, committed suicide in 2010 suffering from chronic depression).
In 2016 the show got a spin-off called 'Nieuwe Tijden' (English: 'New Times') which follows some of the younger characters from GTST and some new characters as they go off to college.
The script of the first two seasons is based on the Australian series 'The Restless Years'. The main characters were also derived from characters from this series. From the third season this formula has been released and since then the storylines of GTST have been fully developed by Dutch authors.
O'Bservation: 'Goede tijden, slechte tijden' and 'The Restless Years', as well as the German adaptation, 'Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten', all belong in the main Toobworld. The characters all might share the same storylines, but the names are all changed and eventually both of the remakes headed off in their own directions.
'Pittige tiljden' ('Spicy Times') was a press release series on the soap opera 'Good times, bad times'. The series was made by Irene Moors and Carlo Boszhard as part of the children's program 'Telekids'.
Boszhard was one of the presenters of the youth program 'Pauze TV' around 1990 . For this program he played at the time in the same kind of persiflage, called 'Moderate Times'. This series is often seen as a forerunner of 'Spicy Times', which was broadcast weekly between 1996 and 1999 . In total, 99 episodes have been made of the series. The title track was listed in the Dutch Top 40 in 1997.
Boszhard and Moors took care of the leading roles themselves. These roles were caricatures of a number of 'Good Times, bad times' - characters, including Arnie, Rik, Linda, Meta, Jessica and Robert. Each character had his own standard outfit, wore a wig and had standard phrases. For example, Meta and Jessica said each episode, respectively: "I am Meta, but I am actually a man", and "What a condition!". Little Wagons were provided by the Ask-But-Touch-Guest. These were mostly well-known Dutch people, of whom regularly actors who played bad times themselves in 'Good Times'. However, foreign guests also participated. One time is the now deceased Irish / American actress Darlene Conley came along in the role of Sally Spectra which she played in 'The Bold and the Beautiful'.
The storyline consisted of the same kind of situations as in 'Good times, bad times', but then very over the top. Furthermore, current news facts in the series were processed. You could see how Edsilia Rombley and Marlayne Sahupala participated in the Eurovision song contest . Despite the fact that the program has been stopped for years, the popularity of 'Spicy Times' is still high.
The pub of 'Spicy Times' was called De Peerenboom , named after De Rozenboom from 'Goede Tijden, Bad Tijden'. Many scenes were recorded here. Often there was also a somewhat musty man at a table; a member of the editorial staff fulfilled this role as an [extra].
O'Bservation: I would place 'Pittige Tiljden' in two other other TV dimensions - Skitlandia and Doofus Toobworld. But if push came to shove in picking only one, I'd choose Skitlandia.
This post is dedicated to my friend Lynn Hippen, who has deep roots in the Netherlands with a "second family" with whom she bonded while there as a high school transfer student.
Whoever Lynn's televersion is in Toobworld, she spent that transfer year in Meerdijk.
Until next time....
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