With scripts originally written for U.S. radio, and characters created by Robert Lindsay and Kathleen Lindsay, the CBC made an attempt at a domestically produced daytime drama, a form that has never fared well on English language television in Canada.

The characters' stories intermingled, but, deviating somewhat from the conventions of the soap opera, the continuing story of Scarlett Hill was structured in blocks of five episodes. Stories that started on a Monday strove toward culmination on the Friday to make way for a new family in town and a new narrative block the next week.