'Beyond the Gates,' first new soap opera since 1999, focuses on Black family

After leaving Moriches over 60 years ago, Clifton Davis got into show business, and never looked back. He started as an electrician at the old ABC studios in the West 50s, then became an actor, eventually landing roles on Broadway ("Hello, Dolly!"), TV ("Amen") and movies ("Any Given Sunday"). More recently he was a regular on "Madam Secretary" and "Godfather of Harlem."

Yet over all the decades, and all those dozens of roles, there was the One that Got Away, or at least the one most actors could reliably fall back on — a regular gig on a daytime soap opera.

This Long Island native, now 79, was never lacking for work and even found time to write hit songs for The Supremes ("Here Comes the Sunrise") and Jackson 5 ("Never Can Say Goodbye"). But soaps — a bedrock genre of both radio and TV, whose origins date back a century — did not exactly welcome Black actors with open arms over most of that long history, either.

In 1968, Ellen Holly became the first Black lead on a soap ("One Life to Live") while the true breakthrough roles had to wait until the '80s with Darnell Williams and Debbi Morgan on "All My Children," then the '90s, with Kristoff St. John on "The Young and the Restless."

Black actors and storylines are, of course, critical to the soaps these days, except for this other little hitch — there's just three of them left on broadcast TV.

FIRST SINCE '99

On Monday at 2 p.m. that changes, and how, when "Beyond the Gates" becomes the first new network daytime soap in 26 years, and the first to feature a largely Black cast. As if to provide the exclamation mark for this historic launch, Davis has finally landed his soap, as co-lead alongside Tamara Tunie, another TV veteran who spent most of the '90s on "As the World Turns" before a long run on "Law & Order: SVU" (as medical examiner Melinda Warner). Watch a preview clip here.

"When I walked onto the set it brought tears to my eyes, to see how much progress we've made, and to see skilled workers — executive producers, writers, all African Americans — who were there not because they're Black but because they're excellent at their job," Davis said in a recent phone interview. "It was a wonderful thing to see."

He added, "It was something I wanted to add to my resume, but I'm incredibly grateful and blessed to be a part of this."

With the decline and free-fall of network TV — not to mention that of soaps — Davis is part of something that wasn't really supposed to happen.

SOAPS ON LIFE SUPPORT

Daytime soaps began their long slide starting in 1970 when nearly half of adult women had entered the workforce, then picked up the pace in the early '90s when the televised O.J. Simpson trial offered a brand new type of daytime TV diversion. Starting in the 2000s, some of the most iconic names in American television disappeared, such as "As the World Turns" (2010) and "All My Children" (2011). Most had been around for half a century or longer, like "Guiding Light" (2009) which began on radio in 1937.

In 1970, there were 19 soaps on the three networks. In 2025, CBS' "The Bold and the Beautiful," and "The Young and the Restless," and ABC's "General Hospital" are the sole survivors ("Days of Our Lives" moved from NBC to Peacock in 2022.)

"Soaps aren't dying but maybe on life support," says Barbara Irwin, a soap expert and professor emeritus at Canisius College in Buffalo. "CBS obviously has had great success with their two remaining shows, and just renewed 'Young & Restless' up through 2028. They're laying the claim as the network that still believes in soap operas."

'LET'S DO THAT BLACK SOAP'

How this latest launch came about involved a wrenching moment in recent American history and a network's decision to expand the diversity reflected on its own air. A few months after the murder of George Floyd in the spring of 2020, CBS launched an initiative with the NAACP to create programming for the network. Sheila Ducksworth, a veteran programmer and head of scripted programs for Will Packer Media, was named to lead the venture. Ducksworth decided on a soap, then turned to one of the genre's offscreen stars, Michele Val Jean, a writer who had launched her own career in the late '80s on "Generations" — TV's first soap with a fully integrated cast. She later became a creative force on "General Hospital" over a 19-year run, then "B&B" over a dozen years.

In a zoom call from California, Val Jean explained that "I'd always wanted to write a show — not necessarily a soap — about a rich Black family, then wrote a pilot about one in Beverly Hills, with Vivica Fox [as the lead] in mind. She liked the script and said you need to take this to Sheila Ducksworth.

"I guess I was the first person Sheila called and she said, 'Let's do that Black soap.' "

When this Chicago native started in soaps, she had been one of only two Black writers in the genre — the other was Michelle Patrick of "All My Children" — which led to a running joke, she said. "We'd be at the Daytime Emmys sitting together, and would call it the Annual Black Writers' Dinner while people coming by wouldn't even have to remember our names because we were both Michelles."

Val Jean says she "grew up watching soaps, while my grandmother watched them, and my mother, too." What she didn't see for the most part were Black faces or Black stories.

"We'd get the occasional [Black character] like the Black best friend, or the Black family that would show up, then sort of trickle away. I remember at one point on 'All My Children' they had all the Black people living in the same house."

With "Beyond the Gates," Val Jean decided to flip the script, if not the classic soap tropes. "Gates" is set in a fictional gated community in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. — but as the CBS press notes floridly explain — "behind these pristine walls and lush, manicured gardens are juicy secrets and scandals waiting to be uncovered." At the top of the pecking order are Vernon (Davis) and Anita (Tunie) Dupree, dignified oligarchs who work hard to remind their restless and entitled children that the Dupree name means something within these hallowed walls — in fact pretty much everything.

But that message is not always heeded. In the opener, one of their daughters, Dani — Karla Mosley, a "B&B" veteran who left that series in 2019 — is at war with the woman who stole her two-timing husband. The battle threatens to engulf the rest of the family.

ROOTED IN FAMILY

What's unprecedented here is that family at the center — wealthy, in charge and Black. This specific kind of hyperfocus has never been seen before on a daytime soap except that — at least in the pilot — race feels irrelevant. But for one obvious difference, the Duprees could be the Carringtons of "Dynasty" or the Ewings of "Dallas." The characters and their backstories (as well as rivalries) arrive Monday afternoon fully formed, and for the time being, they're colorblind.

Val Jean says, "It's rooted in family. They might be fighting like cats and dogs. They might disapprove of each other, but when push comes to shove, that family is there for each other, and they — the matriarch and patriarch — will go to the wall for that family they created."

Soap expert Irwin worked for years as a consultant with the godfather of soaps, William Bell, the creator of many soaps including those current tentpoles on CBS. "I have great respect for what [soaps] do, and I've always said that if they never existed and someone went into a network in 2025 with a great idea for a genre — 100-page script a day, 52 weeks a year — they'd say you're crazy."

Soaps, she says, "are an amazing feat. The storytelling pace now has obviously quickened in more recent years but three months is nothing for a story-arc, and Bill [who died in 2005] took six years on 'Days of Our Lives' to resolve who one of the character's father was."

For that reason, soaps need time to develop — in fact, years. That's both the challenge and risk for "Beyond the Gates." Black viewers have been especially loyal to soaps, Irwin says, but they're also demanding. This newcomer "has to be strong out of the gates — no pun intended — so that someone will tune in the first day and say, 'Oh, that's interesting, let's see what happens.' If they don't capture that relatively quickly, they won't build word-of-mouth."

Val Jean knows the stakes as well as anyone and says she's prepared. "I never thought this would happen because networks are not green-lighting soaps but canceling them. But yeah, much to my surprise, here we are and this is four years in the making."