Isis (Maxine Williams, left) arranged the purchase of a black-market baby to help her partner-in-crime Sahara (Simone Harris, centre) snag the unwitting Jason Du Soleil. Meanwhile, Tiffany (Natacha Jones, right) actually was pregnant with Jason’s child
Alex Smailes
Dallas, the progenitor of all modern night-time soap operas, changed American culture so dramatically, if you please, that when Larry Hagman, starring as J.R. Ewing, was murdered in a season finale, a TV-show plot twist became the catchphrase for an era: “Who shot J.R.?” It’s unlikely the makers of Westwood Park, Trinidad’s glitzy night-time soap, will ever be overwhelmed by a demand for “The Baroness was a Man!” t-shirts, but with a cross-dressing main character in its first season, and a whole heap of other bacchanal in the three since, Westwood Park is indubitably the most influential Caribbean television show on the air today.
It is also by far and away the most successful. Only three Trinidadian productions before Westwood Park even qualify to be described as series: Calabash Alley and Turn of the Tide, both of which featured gritty rather than glittery characters and storylines, and neither of which went beyond a first season; and No Boundaries, the former TV soap opera light-heavyweight champ, which went up to 48 episodes. The fifth season of Westwood Park, scheduled to premiere on Trinidad and Tobago’s TV6 on 6 April, will end with episode 85. Earth TV, Westwood’s producer, and TV6’s parent group, CCN, the executive producer, have already committed to a sixth season, which will allow the series to be brought to end with the magic number of 100 episodes. Some time after that, hopes Earth TV boss Danielle Dieffenthaller — co-creator, producer, director, editor, storyline developer, and driving force behind Westwood Park — the show may just begin to make money.
The Westwood Park crew on location in Barbados
Courtesy Earth TV
That Westwood Park should have been made at all, far less run to five full seasons, is an ongoing triumph in a never-ending battle for funding. To describe Trinidad’s ruling class as philistine would be to give its members an undeservedly exaggerated appreciation of things artistic. (The exceptions to this general rule obviously include the show’s principal sponsors: BWIA West Indies Airways, Angostura, SM Jaleel, and RBTT.) In one of Westwood Park’s many deep ironies, it struggles to break even financially while lavishly depicting a lifestyle of seriously conspicuous consumption. (The series takes its name from two of Port of Spain’s more expensive neighbourhoods, the middle- to upper-middle class nouveau Westmoorings, and the old-money, decidedly posh Goodwood Park. In Los Angeles, the show might have been called Beverlywood Hills.) Most of the important characters ar. . .
Alex Smailes
Dallas, the progenitor of all modern night-time soap operas, changed American culture so dramatically, if you please, that when Larry Hagman, starring as J.R. Ewing, was murdered in a season finale, a TV-show plot twist became the catchphrase for an era: “Who shot J.R.?” It’s unlikely the makers of Westwood Park, Trinidad’s glitzy night-time soap, will ever be overwhelmed by a demand for “The Baroness was a Man!” t-shirts, but with a cross-dressing main character in its first season, and a whole heap of other bacchanal in the three since, Westwood Park is indubitably the most influential Caribbean television show on the air today.
It is also by far and away the most successful. Only three Trinidadian productions before Westwood Park even qualify to be described as series: Calabash Alley and Turn of the Tide, both of which featured gritty rather than glittery characters and storylines, and neither of which went beyond a first season; and No Boundaries, the former TV soap opera light-heavyweight champ, which went up to 48 episodes. The fifth season of Westwood Park, scheduled to premiere on Trinidad and Tobago’s TV6 on 6 April, will end with episode 85. Earth TV, Westwood’s producer, and TV6’s parent group, CCN, the executive producer, have already committed to a sixth season, which will allow the series to be brought to end with the magic number of 100 episodes. Some time after that, hopes Earth TV boss Danielle Dieffenthaller — co-creator, producer, director, editor, storyline developer, and driving force behind Westwood Park — the show may just begin to make money.
The Westwood Park crew on location in Barbados
Courtesy Earth TV
That Westwood Park should have been made at all, far less run to five full seasons, is an ongoing triumph in a never-ending battle for funding. To describe Trinidad’s ruling class as philistine would be to give its members an undeservedly exaggerated appreciation of things artistic. (The exceptions to this general rule obviously include the show’s principal sponsors: BWIA West Indies Airways, Angostura, SM Jaleel, and RBTT.) In one of Westwood Park’s many deep ironies, it struggles to break even financially while lavishly depicting a lifestyle of seriously conspicuous consumption. (The series takes its name from two of Port of Spain’s more expensive neighbourhoods, the middle- to upper-middle class nouveau Westmoorings, and the old-money, decidedly posh Goodwood Park. In Los Angeles, the show might have been called Beverlywood Hills.) Most of the important characters ar. . .
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