Season 1
Spanning four decades, this long-running soap set in the fictitious town of Salem looks at the lives of two families, namely the Hortons and the Bradys.
Through many years viewers have tuned in to watch the daily drama unfolding between the Hortons and the Bradys.
Tom and Alice Horton have tried to set a solid foundation for their children and grandchildren, hoping that everyone will find happiness down the path of life. Sadly Tom has passed on and Alice is still trying to instill good values in her grandchildren.
The head of the Brady bunch is Shawn and Caroline Brady, also a good family with good values, who are very close friends with the Hortons. We see how the two families become interlinked through different marriages over the years.
Of course, a soap would not be a soap if we didn't have a villain/vixen. In Days of our Lives, we've seen many villains and vixens over the years, most notably Victor Kiriakis, Ernesto Toscano, Vivian Alamain, Lawrence Alamain, Larry Welch, Samantha Brady, Nicole Walker and our favourite arch villain, Stefano DiMera.
Stefano DiMera's evil ways see him kidnapping, implanting chips in people's brains and basically trying to control minds. His favourite victims are Marlena Evans and Hope Williams and Stefano does everything in his power to destroy the Bradys. He's been killed way too many times and viewers are still unsure whether he's dead or alive.
Stefano's children, especially Tony DiMera, have been well taught by their father and are carrying on his legacy with their evil and calculating ways.
Somehow the obsession of the DiMeras always reverts back to Marlena Evans. What hold does Marlena (Queen of the Night) have over the DiMera men?
Marlena's husband John Black has a mysterious past, one he himself is unsure of and which is somehow linked to Stefano and his son Tony Di Mera. Will John ever find the answers to all the questions of his past?
With many love triangles, lies, betrayals, blackmail, marriages, divorces, affairs, murders, court dramas, rapes, kidnappings, baby switches, identity crises, amnesia, demons, etc. Days of our Lives has taken viewers on a rollercoaster ride proving its popularity and standing the test of time. Like sands through the hourglass.
Broadcast Notes
Days of Our Lives ended in South Africa on Wednesday 20 July 2016, after SABC3 cancelled the show to accommodate an 80% local content quota. The last episode to air was the final episode of Season 33 (Episode 12,107).
After calls to reinstate the show and the abolishment of the content quota, SABC3 brought the show back in a new timeslot of weekdays at 23h30, beginning with Episode 12,107 on Monday, 22 August 2016. This moved an hour earlier to weekdays at 22h30, from Monday 3 April, 2017 until the end of its run on the channel.
SABC3 cancelled the show for a second time in August 2017, ending with the final episode (#12,367; or Season 34, Episode 260) on Tuesday, 22 August.
Thereafter, e.tv picked the show up and began broadcasting it from Monday 4 September, 2017, beginning with a recap episode. The show also started the following day on eExtra.