Goede tijden, slechte tijden

Goede tijden, slechte tijden (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɣudə ˈtɛidə(n) ˈslɛxtə ˈtɛidə(n)], lit. 'Good times, bad times'), also known as GTST or simply Goede tijden, is the longest-running Dutch soap opera, which began on 1 October 1990 on RTL4. The programme was the first daily (every workday) soap in the Netherlands and Europe. The soap is produced by Joop van den Ende and to date over 6,300 episodes[1] have been broadcast. It was initially based on the Australian soap The Restless Years, however it switched to original scripts during the third season and onwards. GTST is broadcast Monday to Friday at 20:00, and became available on demand via streaming platform Videoland from 2015.

Goede tijden, slechte tijden
Genre	Soap opera
Created by	Reg Watson
Based on	The Restless Years
Written by	Rohan Gottschalk (Head writer)
Starring	Present cast
No. of seasons	34
No. of episodes	6,811 (as of October 26, 2023)
Production
Executive producer	Peter Römer
Running time	23 min. w/o commercials 30 min. w/ commercials
Production companies	Endemol Grundy
Release
Original network	RTL 4
Original release	1 October 1990 (1990-10-01) – present

At its peak, the show drew around 1.5 million viewers daily, in a country of just over 15 million people at the time. Nowadays, the show still draws over a million views per episode – it is watched linearly by around 800.000 people, with an additional 300.000 viewers on Videoland.[2] After 33 years, it remains the highest-rated soap opera in the Netherlands.

The soap mainly revolves around the lives of the families Alberts, Sanders, De Jong, Van Houten and Bouwhuis. It all takes place in the fictional town of Meerdijk. Like any other soap, marriage, divorce, kidnapping and business are a few of the ingredients of GTST, although in recent years, GTST has become known for writing and producing more controversial storylines. GTST is also known for having a summer break each year, ending a season sometime in June with a cliffhanger, only to resume three months later in September. Although the early cliffhangers often revolved around family drama, later cliffhangers have often revolved around disasters and unexpected twists.

Many former actors who once were part of the cast are now well known in the Netherlands and Europe, such as Katja Schuurman, Reinout Oerlemans and Antonie Kamerling.

In 2014, a gay marriage took place in the soap opera, this was the first time this happened in a Dutch TV-show.[3]

In 2016, the show got a spin-off called Nieuwe Tijden (English: New Times), which follows some of the younger characters from GTST and some new characters as they go off to college. Nieuwe Tijden was cancelled in 2018.[4]