Classic Televison -- Weekdays

Somerset

Original channel

NBC

Original run

March 30, 1970 – December 31, 1976

Somerset (sometimes called Another World in Somerset) is an American television soap opera which ran on NBC from March 30, 1970 until December 31, 1976. The show was a spinoff of another NBC serial, Another World.

Initially, the show revolved around Missy Palmer Matthews (Carol Roux), Lahoma Vane Lucas (Ann Wedgeworth), and Sam Lucas (Jordan Charney). These were three popular characters who were first seen on Another World. They moved to the fictional town of Somerset, an area in the northern Detroit suburbs in Michigan and started their lives anew.

The first stories on the serial revolved around the trio's progress in starting new friendships and romantic entanglements. In Somerset, the other families of importance were the Davis family, the Buchanans, the Grants and the Delaneys, who ran Somerset's major employer, Delaney Brands. Within six months, Missy was gone and new characters were added, including a new family, the Kurtz family and several female characters to act as love interests for Dr. Stan Kurtz and Peter Delaney.

In early 1971, the show changed writers, with Robert Cenedella leaving the show in favor of Henry Slesar.

Further, Somerset slowly moved away from the traditional soap format, and started telling stories that dealt heavily with the Mafia and other types of crime, not unlike CBS' The Edge of Night. After the departure of Slesar, several other writers attempted to bring the show's ratings up with varying mixtures of the two previous formats, each of them slowly removing nearly all of the original characters. One of them, Roy Winsor, was the creator of Search for Tomorrow, Love of Life, and The Secret Storm.

The Somerset County Courthouse in Somerville, New Jersey was used for exteriors.