Night and Day

Night and Day is a British mystery soap opera, produced by Granada Television for LWT, that first broadcast on 6 November 2001 on ITV, and ran until 5 June 2003. The series was launched as part of ITV's new early evening line-up, with an enormous amount of pre-publicity and trailers promoting the series. The series was written and created by screenwriter Caleb Ranson, with other contributors to the series including John Jackson, Jessica Townsend, Cris Cole, Elizabeth Delaney, Jeff Dodds, Robert Fraser, Adrian Hewitt, Martha Jay, Charles Lambert, Ed McCardie, Adrian Pagan, Bradley Quirk, Tony Ramsay and Catherine Stedman. The series opening theme, "Always & Forever", was performed by Kylie Minogue. At first, the series rated well, even drawing comparisons to series such as Twin Peaks. However, as the series storylines became more bizarre and complex, it began to rate poorly, only gaining a small, cult fanbase, and was pushed to a later timeslot due to the lack of mainstream interest. Subsequently, little more than six months after the series premiered, filming wrapped on 17 May 2002, and the series was later axed by station executives, who cited low ratings as the principal reason. The final episode aired on screen on 5 June 2003. Synopsis The series begins on the sixteenth birthday of best friends Jane Harper and Della Wells, who live in the same street in Greenwich. However, before the day is over, Jane has disappeared. Over the next year, the lives of six families in the street become further intertwined as a tangled web of secrets and lies threaten to boil to the surface, and Jane's disappearance continues to have a devastating effect. The series combined typical soap opera plots, including babies switched at birth and clandestine affairs, with more unusual stories including murders at the catacombs, and an episode in which a mysterious stranger came to the street and stopped time to uncover the truth about the residents, only to eventually erase their memories of events of that alternative reality and turn everything back to normal. Despite the series being axed, the decision was made long before the final episode was set to air allowing the producers to script an ending to the series. As the series comes to a close, Sam – wandering away from home – finds Jane working as a geisha, with no memory of who she was.