'Soap' is an American sitcom that originally ran on ABC from 1977 to 1981.The show was created as a parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour long primetime comedy. Like a soap opera, the show's story was presented in a serial format and included melodramatic plot elements such as amnesia, alien abduction, demonic possession, murder, and kidnapping.The cast included former soap opera actors: Robert Mandan (who played Chester Tate) had previously appeared on Search for Tomorrow as a leading man for Mary Stuart, and Donnelly Rhodes (who played Dutch Leitner) had played the first husband of Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless.The show aired for four seasons and 85 episodes, including some one-hour-long episodes. (The hour-long episodes were later split in two, yielding 93 half-hour episodes for syndication.) The show was created, written, and produced by Susan Harris. The final four episodes of the series aired as one-hour episodes during the original... more