Looking at DS from the perspective of that era, it truly was an ambitious and progressive show, in terms of production design and storytelling.
Which is one of the main reasons why, when I see so many articles, particularly on Internet Web sites and blogs, that spend an inordinate amount of space criticizing the original DS for its production values, I want to smack the writers upside the head.
They seem to view DS from the perspective of what today's soaps are like as if they have no concept of what DS' contemporary soaps were like. And indeed I suspect that's exactly what the problem is in most cases because the writers are much too young to know. Though that's still not an excuse because as writers one of their main jobs is to do the research in order to educate themselves about every aspect of what they're writing about. But these days far too many have sadly shirked that responsibility.