Stories were originally self-contained within one episode and featured various medical emergencies.īecause of the obvious burdens and expense of casting for separate stories each day and due to ratings being lower than expected on July 22, 1963, stories were expanded to weekly arcs with a new plot introduced every Monday and concluding that week on Friday. 'The Doctors' debuted as an anthology series rather than a conventional soap opera, a very ambitious concept for that time. On December 31, 1982, 'The Doctors' was cancelled after 5,280 episodes. The series' 5000th episode aired in November of 1981.

Several well-known actors & actresses such as Alec Baldwin, Kathy Bates, Ellen Burstyn, Jonathan Frakes, Julia Duffy, Kathryn Harrold and Terry O'Quinn appeared on the show.

The Doctors was an NBC network soap opera created by Orin Tovrov which premiered on NBC Daytime on April 1, 1963.Ĭast members of the series consisted of James Pritchett, Elizabeth Hubbard, Ann Williams and David O'Brien.

The doctors soap opera