TVSquad

Think of the most popular American daytime soap. Then, multiply that by a factor of 10. That's the ongoing craze known as the BBC's immortal EastEnders. Premiering in 1985, the working-class melodrama remains one of the U.K.'s highest-rated series.

Now, EastEnders is set to kick off its own web spinoff series next year. According to a Beeb press release, the online BBC Vision Multiplatform commissioned EastEnders: E20 to go live in January, 2010.

In addition to taking advantage of TV's online evolution, the web series will help to celebrated the EastEnders 25th anniversary.

Now, the question is if anyone in Hollywood can catch on to moves like these and adapt more successful U.S. shows into big name web series. Shows like 24 tried brief web dalliances, but nothing this ambitious has yet to take flight from American networks.

Sometimes it's true that all's well that ends well. And sometimes to reach that happy ending, arms are twisted, feelings are hurt, and bad blood is spilled. In the case of The Young and the Restless and actor Eric Braeden, there was a good deal of acrimony on both sides. The fact that Braeden is back in the fold now and he will continue as Victor Newman for the foreseeable future, doesn't obscure the fact that it was a nasty situation.

It's been a tumultuous six weeks for Eric Braeden and The Young and the Restless. For a while, it looked like he was on his way out of the soap when contract talks broke down between the star and Sony. Then there was a story in the trades about other actors being contacted to possibly replace him, including William Devane, Paul Michael Glaser and Peter Strauss. Before you could say Jabot Cosmetics, Bob posted the news that Eric and Sony had reached an agreement and Victor Newman would continue to be played by Eric Braeden. Crisis averted.

Well, while he was still in exit mode, the show wrote Victor out. In the storyline, Victor is recovering from a heart transplant and has decided to go to a clinic in Belgium to rehabilitate. This week he's been tying up loose ends before leaving.

There will be no reprieve from the governor, no last minute miracle save. No, the end is approaching and Guiding Light will stop filming the week of August 3. The CBS soap opera will air its last show on September 18, 2009, and the 72-year-long run of America's most enduring daytime drama will officially wrap.

Fans have been hoping that somehow, someway Guiding Light would find a new home, but neither CBS nor Procter and Gamble have been able to save the show. Soapcentral.com has reported that efforts have been made to no avail. "We have not been able to secure an outlet to carry the show moving forward. We are extremely disappointed with this outcome, but we are confident we have exhausted every possible option," said TeleNext Media SVP Brian T. Cahill.

Valentine's Day is on a Saturday this year, so why not eschew the whole dinner and a night out routine for a day in from the cold watching TV boxed sets on DVD? What better gift is there than an entire day of laziness catching up on those boxed sets you got for Christmas and have had no time to watch? But choose carefully. No one can take a whole day of Rock of Love or Matlock.

Beauty and the Beast: The Complete Series - A tolerable "chick flick" type series, you can probably get away with watching just the first two seasons, before Linda Hamilton left and her character was killed off. And once your significant other gets used to the idea of Ron Perlman in Beast make-up, maybe you can convince her to watch Hellboy with you.

Sure Lost is a bona fide hit, but who remembers Invasion? In fact, none of the sci fi series premiering that year (Surface and Threshold) made it beyond a single season. And yet, as Brad reported, ABC is developing The Return, a series focusing on how the world handles an "alien landing." You know, like the classic V mini-series of the '80s. In fact, the last episode of V: The Series was called "The Return." Maybe this is a secret code name for the long teased V return!

But that announcement got me thinking about all those sci fi and fantasy shows that never finish on television. It's a phenomenon us long-time science fiction/fantasy fans have learned to live with. We jump on any new genre show on television hoping against hope that the ratings will be strong enough that we'll get the whole story. Alas, we know that more often than not the plug will be pulled mid-stream and we'll be left wanting. And for every Joss Whedon who continues Buffy and Angel in comics, there are tons more who don't.

Here are the new TV DVDs, in stores tomorrow.

• Army Wives - Season 1
• Bleach - Season 1 (Uncut)
• The Boondocks - Season 2
• Broken Trail - Complete Miniseries
• Comedy Central Home Grown
• Da Vinci's Inquest - Season 3
• The Dukes of Hazzard - Movie Collection
• Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes - Season 1
• The Fugitive - Season 2, Vol. 1
• Hawaii Five-0 - Season 4
• Home Improvement - Season 8
• The Incredible Hulk - When Monsters Meet
• Into Alaska - Collection 1
• John Adams - Complete Miniseries
• McLeod's Daughters - Season 6
• My Boys - Season 1
• The Odd Couple - Season 4
• 7th Heaven - Season 6
• Soap - Complete Series
• TekWar - TekWar
• What's Happening - Complete Series

Hey everyone! This time we've got five copies of Soap - The Complete Series on DVD for five lucky, random commenters. The DVD is available in stores starting tomorrow.

To enter, simply leave a comment below before 5:00PM Eastern, Friday, June 13 simply telling us your favorite moment from the show (if you have one). As always, we'll randomly choose five winners amongst the eligible entries. Some other details:
Click here for complete Official Rules.

There are a lot of great shows that stand out in my mind as favorites from my childhood: Magnum P.I., Simon and Simon, Cheers, Quantum Leap. They all paved the way for future shows in some form, but the one that was truly groundbreaking is Soap.

For those of you who are generationally challenged by this post and have no idea what I am talking about, Soap was a sitcom -- sort of -- that aired from 1977 to 1981, a pitifully short time for the originality that it oozed. What was so special about Soap?

1. It was essentially the first time we saw Billy Crystal
And what a role: a very gay man who fathers a child and is in a custody battle for her. And toward the end of the series, he is somehow hypnotized into thinking he is an old Jewish man, probably where Billy's famous schtick originated.

The success of last summer's General Hospital: Night Shift was the harbinger of things to come. And now they have. SoapNet announced a new 10-episode drama series called MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives.

It makes sense that SoapNet would take another stab at creating its own dramas. Last year's Night Shift, the channel's first attempt at that kind of original programming, proved more popular than the reruns of daytime soaps it had been running at 11 o'clock at night. But the difference between this new offering -- about the ladies in the lives of professional hockey players...hockey and soap? -- is that Night Shift was based on General Hospital and used popular stars from the daytime show for the spin-off. If Steve Burton (Jason), Kimberly McCullough (Robin) and Jason Thompson (Patrick) were not in Nightshift, would SoapNet viewers have tuned in?

Has it really been 45 years since General Hospital started broadcasting? Four decades + five years of medical machinations, legendary love stories, action and intrigue. Yes, yes, it's true, on April 1, ABC's General Hospital will celebrate 45 years on the air. Current executive producer, Jill Farren Phelps, will cut the cake and members of the cast will blow out the candles, but we're the ones that probably should be smiling. Memories of the great years gone by are inevitable with any show that's run as long as GH. But there's something special about this ABC soap.

Cynopsis reports that now that the writers' strike is over -- hallelujah! -- Lifetime Television will soon begin production on the second season of Army Wives with episodes scheduled to air in early summer. This is great news for fans of the Lifetime original drama series that was a ratings juggernaut when it premiered last summer. In fact, Army Wives was the most successful series in Lifetime's 23-year history! During its 13-episode run, Army Wives was the highest rated drama on cable among women, establishing new Lifetime marks for an original scripted series. The soapy-drama was scheduled to return in April, but then the writers struck and the show has been in hibernation -- I mean, hiatus -- ever since.

For whatever reason, the name Chuck has turned out to be very popular this year. On TV, Pushing Daisies has a major character named Chuck and, of course, there's the new series Chuck. in the theaters, Chuck and Larry were happily married and Dane Cook was a Chuck with extraordinary luck. All these Chuck's got me thinking (not to mention craving a hamburger) some of the greatest people on television have been named Chuck. Here are a few.

Chuck Cunningham (Happy Days)
When the Cunningham family first made their appearance, Chuck was clearly the funniest part of the family. Unfortunately as the show progressed, it became clear that there simply wasn't enough room for Chuck in the house or on the series. Chuck Cunningham lives on, however, as the most famous forgotten character of all time.

For the most part, television is filled with wacky whimsical characters designed to help us forget about the darkness that invades our daily lives. However once in awhile a character comes along who dares to make us face our own evil within. What follows are my personal favorites.

Dexter Morgan (Dexter)
Just because Dexter only preys on bad people doesn't excuse the fact that he has a compulsion to kill people in very sadistic ways. Dexter may be the perfect psycho because he is completely self-aware. He knows full well that what he is doing is unacceptable but also firmly believes that he can do nothing to change who he is.

Starting today, the long-running soap opera Days of Our Lives will be available on iTunes for the usual $1.99 per episode. Fans can also get episodes a bit cheaper by purchasing twenty episodes for $9.99.

According to Variety, placing Days on iTunes is most likely a move to get more people to watch the series, which has lost some viewers over the last year or so. Frankly, I don't see why more soap operas aren't made available this way, or, even better, made available for free online. Soaps more or less require a person to be tuned in day in and day out, and fans, one assumes, would love to be able to go back and catch up on whatever they might have missed.

This, however, leads to another question, which is "how old are the people watching Days, and how many of those people are going to use iTunes for anything?" Something tells me an iTunes promotional push isn't going to be much help.