Spinoffs and Specials
The success of the long-running soap opera has had one sister soap, one spinoff in the United States, and two primetime spinoffs in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Young Marrieds was ABC's first attempt at a sister soap for General Hospital. It ran for only two years, racking up a total of 380 episodes. Despite its moderate popularity, it was aired against CBS's top-rated The Edge of Night, which it could not compete against. The series finale aired on March 25, 1966, with the show's main protagonist contemplating suicide. It ended in a cliffhanger, leaving the audience wondering if the man had killed himself or not. The Young Marrieds was set in the fictional suburb of Queen's Point, which was considered by the writers to be a suburb of Port Charles.
The UK series General Hospital did not feature any characters from the American show, but was modeled after its format. It started as a half-hour program broadcast in the afternoons, which was unusual for UK serials that normally aired in prime time. In 1975 it was expanded to an hour-long format and moved to Friday evenings.
Port Charles was a daytime drama that initially featured interns in a competitive medical school program, and was known for having more action actually in the hospital than General Hospital itself. It also included the characters of Scott Baldwin. Serena Baldwin, Lucy Coe, Kevin Collins, and Karen Wexler, all of whom originally appeared as characters on General Hospital. As the show evolved, it tended more towards gothic intrigue, including supernatural elements such as vampires and life after death. It also switched formats from an open-ended daytime serial to 13-week story arcs known as "books", similar to Spanish language telenovelas.
General Hospital: Night Shift is the second American prime time spinoff of a daytime drama (the first being Our Private World, a spinoff of As the World Turns). Its first season aired from July 12, 2007 to October 4, 2007 on SOAPnet, a cable channel owned by ABC. The series follows the nighttime adventures of familiar and new characters around the hospital. As of March 2008, the first season of the series was "SOAPnet's most-watched series ever", with ABC Daytime and SOAPnet President Brian Frons noting that Night Shift drew more than 1 million new viewers to the channel during its first season.
General Hospital: Twist of Fate was a primetime special that aired on Saturday, December 14, 1996. The episode picked up where that Friday's show had left off. The special centered around Laura's supposed death at the hands of Stefan Cassadine.
On April 2, 1998, General Hospital aired a primetime special in celebration of the program's 35th anniversary. Hosted by Anthony Geary, the show focused and recapped on many popular storylines including Monica's breast cancer, BJ's death, and Stone's battle with HIV. To date, this is the only anniversary special that was broadcast in primetime and that didn't include any of the current storyline.
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