Port Charles (fictional city)

Port Charles, New York, is the fictional setting of the ABC Daytime soap operas General Hospital and its spin-offs Port Charles and General Hospital: Night Shift. It was revealed that the Queen's Point setting of The Young Marrieds, a short-lived sister series to General Hospital that ran between 1964 and 1966, was a suburb of Port Charles. Locations within the town are described, below, using in-universe tone.

History

Conception and origin

When the series first began, General Hospital was set in an unnamed city or town somewhere in the United States of America. Between 1964 and 1966, Queen's Point, the setting of the short-lived soap opera, The Young Marrieds, was considered to be a suburb of that same unnamed city, part of a plan to feature regular crossovers between the two shows which never materialized due to the cancellation of Marrieds. It was not until 1977 that the General Hospital setting was finally established as the fictional city of Port Charles, New York.

Port Charles

Port Charles (commonly abbreviated as PC) is an American television soap opera which aired on ABC from June 1, 1997 to October 3, 2003. It is a spin-off of the serial General Hospital, which has been running since 1963 and takes place in the fictional city of Port Charles, New York. The new show features longtime General Hospital characters Lucy Coe, Kevin Collins, Scott Baldwin, and Karen Wexler, along with several new characters, most of whom were interns in a competitive medical school program. In the first episode, tenured nurse Audrey Hardy (General Hospital's longest-running character, portrayed by Rachel Ames) was injured and an intern had to operate on her with a power drill to save her life.

In the first few years, Port Charles got a reputation for focusing most of its energies on the medical school program, setting more of its main action at Port Charles' General Hospital than was seen on the parent show, General Hospital. As it evolved, it turned its focus to stories with gothic intrigue that included themes such as forbidden love, vampires, and life after death (somewhat similar to the earlier series Dark Shadows, which also aired on ABC). It also abandoned the basic open-ended writing style used on all other daytime dramas in December 2000, instead creating thirteen-week story arcs (which were also referred to as "books"). This type of storytelling is a staple of Latin telenovelas. It also allowed the cast, crew, and writing staff to only work six months out of the year.