Beyond the Gates (2025)

Think back, way back to the days before Reality TV (a la The Bachelor, Love Island, Too Hot to Handle, Love is Blind etc.). If you can’t pull this off, then you are likely too young to remember a moment when people got their pre-reality TV (meaning the gossipy, scandalous, scheming, sometimes slimy, often criminal, but many times redeemable) antics from script-driven shows with actors, known as soap operas. The rise of Reality TV in the late 1990s and early 2000s not only put a dent in the number of English-language “stories” (as African Americans often refer to them), it killed a great deal of them off. Do you remember NBCs Another World (1964-1999)? What about CBSs As the World Turns (1956-2010) and Guiding Light (radio: 1937-56; TV 1952-2009)? Of ABCs soap opera landscape which once included All my Children (1970-2013), One Life to Live (1968-2013), and Ryan’s Hope (1975-1989), only General Hospital (1963-) survived, alongside The Bold and The Beautiful (1987-) and Young and the Restless (1973-), both CBS, and NBCs Days of our Lives (1965-).

One of the drivers behind the economic logic that propelled the rise of Reality TV was that Hollywood studios would save money getting real people to do crazy things for free (or far less money) while still providing the intrigue, titillation, and craziness of the soaps. The demise of scripts also meant the demise of script writers’ salaries and even more profits for the studios. But as Reality TV shows have intersected with the rise of vapid influencer culture, many viewers have been turned off and tuned out since the “real” in reality has gone missing (if it was ever there to begin with).

Enter Beyond the Gates, the first soap opera to be launched by a major American TV network since Passions aired in 1999 on NBC (until 2008). This new CBS daytime soap opera which premiered on February 24, 2025 centres the Dupree Family. But the Duprees are not a normal black family. Actually, they’re not a normal family, period! Created and written by Michele Val Jean, the show follows the wealthy and respected African American family headed by the esteemed former senator Vernon Dupree (played by Clifton Davis of Godfather of Harlem, Madam Secretary, and going way back, Half & Half, Amen) and the multi-hyphenate entertainer, EGOT, and matriarch Anita Dupree (played by a silver-haired Tamara Tunie). Tunie of course was a regular on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and a veteran of another soap, As the World Turns, on which she played Jessica Griffin.

Clifton Davis and Tamara Tunie

What makes Beyond the Gates special is that the cast is predominantly black and many of its cultural and social nuances are references to African American arts, history, and political struggles. But the pleasure of the show is, like all soaps, that for all of their wealth (Beyond the Gates is a reference to a fictional, exclusive, country-club gated community in Maryland in which they live) and well-deserved family pride, the Duprees are just as messed up and messy as any other family.

What’s so messy about the Duprees? Well, when we first meet them, all hell is breaking loose in the form of the outrageous and illegal behaviours of their gorgeous but entitled, former model, daughter Dani Dupree (Karla Mosely formerly of The Bold and the Beautiful) who is in crisis as her marriage to the high-flying lawyer Bill Hamilton implodes in humiliating public fashion. Although we do not see it for ourselves, we are made privy to the fact that Bill has had an affair under his wife and daughters’ noses with Hayley Lawson (Marquita Goings), his daughter Naomi Hamilton Hawthorne’s (Arielle Prepetit) supposed friend who Dani had unwisely welcomed into the family home. Making things worse (if that is possible), Bill has decided that a good ole fashion fling is not enough and has planned a wedding ceremony for himself and Hayley at the country club where the Duprees, who are local royalty, typically hold court. Um, awkward!

So, when Dani claims that she is attending the wedding to demonstrate her resolve to move forward in a dignified manner with her life, why is anyone surprised when she produces a gun which she points at the almost married couple, commanding them to kneel? It is clear that Dani, former model and devoted wife and mother rightfully feels abused and humiliated. But what is unclear is if her actions will destroy the Dupree family’s respected name and reputation. As we come to learn, Vernon is a former politician who alongside his devoted and successful wife Anita, have suffered and triumphed over the racist indignities of Civil Right era, Jim Crow USA. There are many (perhaps too many) unsubtle references to the racial struggles they have faced and the respectability politics they have adopted as a family strategy of survival and uplift. Dani’s very public meltdown threatens all of it.

But besides Anita and Vernon, Dani’s also got big sister Dr. Nicole Dupree Richardson (Daphanee Duplaix) in her corner. But although she does not know it yet, the elegant, poised, and beautiful psychiatrist has her own troubles at home (and at work), with which to contend. The two are actually connected. At home her seemingly devoted husband, Dr. Ted Richardson, played away years ago and made a baby while he was at it. That baby is now back in the form of Eva Thomas (Ambyr Michelle) who is hiding in plain sight and insinuating herself into his unsuspecting and unknowing wife’s life by winning a job as her new administrative assistant at the behest of what can only be called her unhinged mother, Dana “Leslie” Thomas (Trisha Mann). While Dana’s ultimate endgame is unclear, her motivation is obviously spite and envy for a life she felt should have been hers.

Both Dani and Nicole have children, some of whom are grown or almost so and who exhibit behaviours on the spectrum from bratty to all-out-nepo-baby. On the bratty side are Dani’s daughters with Bill, Chelsea Hamilton (RhonniRose Mantilla) and Naomi Hamilton Hawthorne (Arielle Prepetit). While the former, an influencer, accidentally lived streams her father’s wedding to Hayley, inadvertently also live-streaming her mother’s gun-toting meltdown, the latter blames, shuns, and ostracizes her devoted detective husband Jacob Hawthorne (Jibre Hordges) after he regretfully arrests her mother who had obviously broken the law.

The show also features the out gay couple and parents, the African American Martin Richardson, Anita and Vernon’s grandson (Brandon Claybon) and his white husband Bradley “Smitty” Smith (Mike Manning). Exemplary of the Dupree family selfishness and myopia, Martin fumes and confronts Bradley when he hears rumours of his desire to return to work to rekindle a public-facing life and career passion that he halted to raise their almost-grown teens so that Martin could pursue his political goals by following in his grandfather’s footsteps.

While most American mainstream (meaning dominantly white) soap operas have traditionally had black actors only in supporting roles and very recently allowed black cast members to play leading characters (like General Hospital), Beyond the Gates flips that script, with most of its white characters lending important, but secondary roles. There’s Dani’s bestie the blonde, fit, fabulous, and philandering Vanessa McBride (Lauren Buglioli) who is cheating on her African American husband Doug McBride who is struggling with a gambling addiction. The kind and generous Nurse Ashley Morgan (Jen Jacob) and her fireman boyfriend Derek Baldwin (Ben Gavin) who grows increasingly jealous of her connection to the African American photographer Andre Richardson (Sena Freeman). There are also veteran white soap superstars like Cady McClain (formerly Dixie Cooney Martin of All my Children) and Jon Lindstrom (formerly/currently Dr. Kevin Collins of General Hospital).

Jon Lindstrom and Cady McClain

But there is a missed opportunity here. Vanessa’s love interest is a secondary character, a white/light-skinned Latino actor who works in the fitness centre at the country club. While the show represents an important breakthrough by elevating a predominantly black cast, the lack of diversity within blackness and across BIPOC populations is as problematic as other mainstream (coded white) soap operas. What do we mean? Vanessa’s unnamed love interest and one other male character seem to be the only current Latino characters and neither is African-Latino, a missed opportunity to reflect the extraordinary diversity of black populations in the USA. (For instance some 2.7 million people from the Dominican Republic or with Dominican ancestry live in the USA as do some 1.6 million Colombians, and almost 1 million Venezuelans. Add to these populations some 2 million people of Brazilian and over 1 million of Haitian origins. To state the obvious, many of these people have African ancestry and contribute to the beauty and vibrancy of black America.)

In the same vein, all the black characters are presented (at least initially) as African American as opposed to African, African-Caribbean, African-South American or other possibilities which would have allowed the soap opera to explore the complexity of blackness across themes like politics, religion, sexuality, music, food, and dress. There is also a strikingly similar look to many of the female characters in terms of a light to medium brown complexion and the normalized relaxed hair styles. Only Naomi and Eva stand out as having hairstyles that could be described as celebrating the natural textures of black hair. Although many of the male characters tend to be darker in complexion than the women, most have similar facial hair, and no key male character as yet sports a hair style that challenges the norm of closely cropped look.

Our point is this, although the show is already proving more than capable of bringing us the scandalous, intriguing, and edgy narrative twists that could develop a faithful following, the show’s cast would benefit from rethinking the narrowness of their conceptualization of blackness and black beauty as a certain type of African Americanness and being more expansive and accurate in their depiction of a fuller representation of the beautiful diversity of black America. It would also be to their benefit to refrain from the heavy handedness of their respectability politics which are strategically aired in repeated conversations between Anita and Vernon. Such details are better delivered to us across time in more natural dialogue and not forced in sermon-like pronouncements.

So, is Beyond the Gates worth watching? For soap fans, absolutely yes. But could it get even better over time? We’re counting on it!