Perhaps the strangest soap opera of all time has come to an end now that Passions has been canceled by DirecTV. The gothic, modern psycho-drama set in a small Maine town replete with witches, elves, zombies and even some regular people, lasted nine years on the air. In primetime terms, that would be a hell of a run. For soaps, it characterizes Passions as a noble -- to some -- failure.

I never cared for Passions. It turned me off in the first season, 1999, but it wasn't because of the outre elements. I was actually interested in the gothic stuff because I'd grown up enjoying Dark Shadows with Barnabus and Quentin and Angelique and all those horror classic reinterpretations on a next-to-nothing budget -- furniture provided by Stern's Department Store, as I recall -- including werewolves, Frankenstein's monster and The Innocents, and parallel universes. Dark Shadows remains a vivid, happy memory.

Fans of the NBC soap Passions who felt sad and neglected when the network announced that the show was ending after eight years take note: the show is going to live on!

The show is going to return this fall in a new home: DirecTV. NBC and the satellite system are about to finalize a deal that will keep the quirky soap opera (which includes, I believe, a character who is a witch, and used to have a character that was a doll brought to life) on the air for four days a week. They'll have to cut the budget, too, but at least the show will live on in some form.

This is the another move in DirecTV's plan to increase the amount of original programming they have.