Tribes (TV series)
| Tribes | |
|---|---|
.png)
Main title card
|
|
| Genre |
Soap opera Teen drama |
| Created by | Leah Laiman |
| Written by |
Trent Jones (head writer) Leah Laiman (executive story consultant) |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 95 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Dennis Steinmetz |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Production company(s) | FSO Productions 20th Century Fox Television |
| Release | |
| Original network | Fox |
| Original release | March 5 – July 13, 1990 |
Tribes is a daily half-hour soap opera that aired briefly on Fox in 1990. Created by veteran soap writer Leah Laiman, the series was targeted at a teen audience.
Laiman described Tribes as "a cross between a daytime soap opera, MTV and an after-school special." Set in Southern California, the series follows a group of teenagers and was "geared to catch the teen and pre-teen audience before they begin homework or go out for the evening."Tribes Executive Producer Dennis Steinmetz, a veteran of CBS' The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, said:
There is a large teen and young adult population who watches soaps. From my experience, what has happened is, whenever school is out, the popularity of daytime genre shows swells considerably. On The Young and the Restless, they would write teen-oriented material during the summer and the Christmas breaks.
Noting that the show was not just for teenagers, Fox executive vice president of program development Steven Chow said, "It's about the relationship between teens and their parents". Steinmetz concurred, saying "I think anyone can watch this. The stories are universal ... We tell stories about teens which affect adults." Laiman noted that the focus of Tribes is "how children respond to what's happening in their families", citing the storyline in which a mother starts drinking to cope with her divorce. Steinmetz said of the show's "comedic moments":
We're trying to lighten the heaviness of daytime drama. But we're not going to be escapist. We're telling real stories and hoping the lighter moments come out of those real stories. I don't think kids or teen-agers walk around with the weight of the world on their shoulders all the time.
Called a "low-budget show" by Laiman, Tribes was produced "like a movie-of-the-week", and one-third of the material was shot on location. Steinmetz explained:
We package five shows, and in some cases six shows, into a group and assign them to a director. We'll block it out like a movie. It's shot very much out of sequence. We also have alternating directing teams and producing teams. We do two location days and three studio days for each five episodes.
...
Wikipedia