New soap Beyond the Gates beats General Hospital in debut week ratings

Beyond the Gates is going beyond! Per Soap Opera Network, the first new daytime drama of the 21st century handily hit No. 1 in its 2pm ET/1pm PT time slot in its first week, surpassing General Hospital, which runs at the same time in the majority of television markets. Not at all bad in an entertainment landscape which has only been running four soaps since the cancellations of Guiding Light, As the World Turns, All My Children and One Life to Live in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012, respectively.

Dani's dilemmas fared well for the premiere outings of Beyond the Gates

For the week of February 24-28, 2025, Beyond the Gates earned its network, CBS, its best performance in the aforementioned time slot in three years with the Women 18-49 demographic – the last high point happening in March 2022. Among Women 25-54, the predominantly Black soap led CBS to its best rankings for the same hour in three-and-a-half years, the previous peak occurring in late September 2021.

To go deeper into the number crunching, Beyond the Gates earned a 0.25 Nielsen rating in the Women 18-49 group in its debut week, which means that 0.25% of the approximate 120 million families randomly selected to take part in the media researcher's statistical sampling program (which has been monitoring the performance of television shows since 1950) watched the sudser. That comes out to an estimated 300,000 viewers in that group. The drama did even better among women aged 25-54, scoring a 0.39 rating, or a rough 468,000 viewers.

General Hospital, which had not been run against another soap since As the World Turns went off the air in 2010, took a hit in both the Women 18-49 and Women 25-54 categories, pulling in a 0.19 for the first and 0.28 for the second against Beyond the Gates last week.

The saga of the Duprees et al came in sixth when compared to all daytime programs in both demographics, behind The Price is Right's separately ranked half-hours, The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and the Todayshow's third hour. Because of Beyond the Gates, most of the other shows in CBS' daytime lineup saw a bump in their own ratings compared to the same week in 2024.

Many soap fans have commented on the quality of the writing on Beyond the Gates, which is, of course, helmed by show creator and head writer Michele Val Jean, formerly of The Bold and the Beautiful, General Hospital, Port Charles, and Generations. The main plot capturing viewers' attention so far is the soapy goodness of volatile woman scored Dani Dupree raging over the marriage between her ex-husband, Bill Hamilton, and his mistress-turned-bride, Hayley Lawson. Last week's Nielsens obviously did not include the fallout from Dani pulling a gun on the about-to-be Hamiltons this past Monday; surely after that the show's ratings will, er, shoot up.

Other developing plot points that have soap fans' tongues wagging is the “oh no she didn't” Leslie Thomas, who last week ran innocent psychiatrist's assistant Laura off the road so she could plant her daughter Eva in Laura's place as a method of getting Eva near her biological father, Ted Richardson, and the mystery behind congressman Martin Richardson, not remarkable for the fact that he's gay but because he's condoning Dani's physical altercations and experiencing nightmares about gun shots – both of which have his grandparents, Vernon and Anita Dupree, desperate to keep his secret “at all costs.”

Finally, what should incentivize folks to invest in this new show is the talent of its cast. While all Beyond the Gates actors have been turning in good performances – including the newbies, some of whom are working their first ever acting gigs – the standouts to date are daytime veteran Tamara Tunie (Anita, ex-Jessica Griffin, As the World Turns, 1987-1995; 2000-2007), who is giving the Dupree matriarch palpable stature and command, and Karla Mosley (Dani, ex-Maya Avant, The Bold and the Beautiful, 2013-2019 and ex-Christina Boudreau, Guiding Light, 2008-2009), who properly infuses Dani with the fury and hurt necessary for her storyline but also adds layers of vulnerability that would otherwise make Dani a two-dimensional soap vixen. Tunie and Mosley are both absolutely compelling to watch.

While it can be intimidating for even a seasoned soaper to pick up a new show from scratch and take in its world building in real time – a challenge of which hasn't faced us since Passions first premiered in 1999 – Beyond the Gates is proving to be worth the investment. And Nielsen ratings count whether we watch the old-fashioned way, or online. Let's help spike 'em up even more!

Beyond the Gates airs weekdays on CBS and streams on Paramount Plus.