The TV Zone

Daytime drama keeps plugging onward, despite the writers’ strike, and despite controversy in the tightknit soap community about the effect of “scab” scripts on the struggling genre.

So the networks are throwing some stars onto the screen to maintain viewer interest. Mario Van Peebles [in ABC photo above] joins the cast of ABC’s “All My Children” Tuesday (Jan. 29), as Samuel Woods, a prosecutor for whom “sparks fly” when he meets Susan Lucci’s indomitable Erica Kane. (Turns out Van Peebles isn’t new to soaps, either. He played Doc Gilmore on “One Life to Live” back in 1982-83.)

And onetime "Partridge Family" mom (then "Drew Carey" love interest) Shirley Jones [in NBC photo at right] joins “Days of Our Lives” Thursday (Jan. 31), playing matriarch Colleen Brady, who’s supposed to be dead. (Video preview here.)

Also arriving is a big star in the soap firmament -- Sarah Brown, a fan fave on ABC’s “General Hospital” in the late ’90s as the conniving Carly. That role now belongs to the firmly established Laura Wright, so Brown hits town Thursday (Jan. 31) in another one, playing a sexy new lady mobster. (Hey, wasn’t that the title of a Susan Lucci TV movie?)

That’s on top of “AMC’s” big recent return of ’80s supercouple Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams as Angie and Jesse. He's dead, too. But in soapland, nothing's everlasting.