High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Soap is an American sitcom that originally ran on ABC from 1977 to 1981. The show was created as a parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour long primetime comedy. Like a soap opera, the show's story was presented in a serial format and included melodramatic plot elements such as amnesia, alien abduction, demonic possession, murder, and kidnapping. In 2007 it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME. The cast included two former soap opera actors. Robert Mandan (who played Chester Tate) had previously appeared on Search for Tomorrow as a leading man for Mary Stuart, and Donnelly Rhodes (who played Dutch Leitner) had played the first husband of Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless.