Soap (1977)

Susan Harris moved the daytime soap into prime time and turned its machinery into the joke. Each episode opens with the announcer's summary of the convoluted story so far and closes by promising that the dangling questions will be answered next time, a device that gets funnier as the plots grow more absurd. The wealthy Tates and working-class Campbells carry it through four seasons on ABC. Billy Crystal's Jodie Dallas, one of the first major openly gay characters on American prime-time television, gives it a heart beneath the farce.