I don't know half these people but that's Barnabas Collins just right of center, he's the one to keep your eye on.

Make no mistake, Dark Shadows is still extremely over acted, the story moves exceedingly slow, people often fumble through their lines, and several of the characters are as shallow as a murderer's grave but there is something oddly hypnotic about it. The excruciatingly slow build has a charm to it. Likewise, I watched this series on Amazon Prime and they include 25 episodes which seem to be the main arch of the Barnabas Collins storyline but, apparently, this show ran for many more episodes before and many more afterward. This creates the effect of dropping you right in the middle of an ongoing story so, right off the bat, the viewer has several mysteries to solve.

The show is set at the fictional Collinwood estate in Collinsport, Maine. The Collins family have apparently been rich captains of industry in the area for over two hundred years. It's not really clear how exactly they came to be so wealthy but I inferred they own a business, possibly several, including a cannery (I have no idea) and maybe interest in a shipping port. We meet the matriarch and overseer of Collinwood early on- Elizabeth Collins, an older woman who apparently is being blackmailed by a "friend" and his lackey. The mystery surrounding that drags on forever. Here is a wonderfully accurate description from Wikipedia - "Dark Shadows had a rocky beginning. Critics were quick to deem the series rather boring for its heavy use of unknown actress Isles and the slow pace. The earliest episodes concerned menacing but unfulfilled conflicts, threatened revenge, then an attempted murder, and, finally, a murder. The supernatural elements that later made the show a hit, were slow to appear and only hinted at until episodes 52 and 70 in which the audience finally sees compelling evidence of a ghost."