If you start examining the History of Television, like you might do if you wanted to take a look at all of the shows set in a particular place, certain patterns become easily seen.
The year we're talking about for this series is 1985. The "Nighttime Soap Opera" is in full swing, with the highly rated "Dallas" on CBS and "Dynasty" on ABC. Then, this came along.
Lorimar was the production company responsible for "Berrenger's." They already were taking up three hours on the CBS weekly schedule with their shows, "Knots Landing," "Falcon Crest" and "Dallas," so when this show got pitched, it seems like the Peacock just jumped in immediately, looking to get in on the trend.
Of course, every Soap needed a some big industry attached as a backdrop for the action. Both "Dallas" and "Dynasty" had Oil, "Falcon Crest" had Wine, and you might say "Knots Landing" had Sex... what with all of the bed hopping going on in that cul-de-sac!
"Berrenger's" was about the dynamic and high-powered world of Retail Sales. It was set in a Department Store. The central location for filming "Berrenger's" was in fact the Main Floor of Barney's New York at 7th Avenue and 17th Street.
Of course, the story centered on the family running this business, the Berrenger patriarch, Simon, being Sam Wanamaker and his eldest son Paul played by Ben Murphy was the store president, and Paul was having an extra-marital fling with the VP played by French actress, Yvette Mimieux.
You needed a collection of people to tell the tale, so, there's the rest of the family, their concubines, the store employees, designers and the press covering the events surrounding the retailer, all filling out the roster.
Oh, and let's not miss the antagonist to the family, the head of a business conglomerate that seems to have a personal vendetta against Simon Berrenger, portrayed by Cesar Romero.
New York played a part because of all the department stores that were still in business at the time, and the elements of high level shopping experiences was absolutely an experience when you came to NYC. In fact the higher level stores are the ones that have survived, like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdoff Goodman.
But, let's be frank. Speaking as a former sales manager for a well-known, real life department store, It's a bit difficult to turn the doings that happen in a location like that into some sort of earth-shattering drama. But, I suppose if you have a corrupt and horny family running the show, you might get some action.
What this could have been, and maybe what this should have been, was a parody, done in a camp style, of all of those other shows as the setting was ideal to skewer the self-importance of these Soap Operas, but played straight. And actually, certain scenes unintentionally did this if you get to see any clips of the program. The following year, the TV miniseries, "Fresno" came close to doing precisely that, depicting the battles between two feuding Raisin producing families.
If you tried to do a show like this now, all of the drama would come from the store fighting to survive in a world where everybody buys their items online. And that probably would be more sad than dramatic. Or I guess you could have it set at an online retailer, where A. I. robots are starting to replace the humans running things. But maybe Artificial Intelligence would make this too real? And with the price of real estate, it wouldn't and couldn't be set in NYC.
