No matter how shallow the material, the format doesn't allow for many tongues-in-cheek. In general, there isn't enough menace or mendaciousness to give "Sunset Beach" an edge.
And by Friday there was some momentum as the week ended with a graphic gunshot murder. An explicit sex scene between underwear-clad law enforcement officers pushes the daytime envelope. The thorny question, morally and legally, of being unfaithful on the Internet (cyber infidelity) is raised. "The wild thing" as a euphemism for sex will quickly lose any cache it may have had. After the gentle, even quaint beginning, more facile dialogue and predictable plotting follow. Carol Potter of "Beverly Hills, 90210" gets a recurring role as a Kansas mother. "Charlie's Angel" handler David Doyle has a cameo as a cynical man on an airplane. Representing the older generation (and the majority of viewers?), Lesley-Anne Down and Kathleen Noone camp it up with spirited perfs, while Leigh Taylor-Young limns a worrywart who owns the local waffle shop. The tense, over-eager acting is understandable, but it's fair to say that the troupe is better suited to body shots than soliloquies. A blond bombshell is missing from the cast list and while everyone is attractive, no raging female beauties have been discovered.
More male chests are on display than in an exhibition of Bruce Weber photographs. Winner of a nationwide talent search, Jason George plays a lifeguard who's sweet on a crusading young journalist (Sherri Saum).
The award for best entrance goes to Peter Barton playing another cop who we first see shackled in his own handcuffs and stripped to the waist. Two cops try to make love work despite the male partner's (Hank Cheyne) Don Juan reputation. Spoiled little rich girl (Sarah Buxton) butts heads with her wealthy father while bedding men indiscriminately.
SUNSET BEACH TV SHOW CHARACTERS SERIES
The "afternoon special" feel is partially dissolved by a series of marginally more adult characters and familiar soap situations. He promptly falls for a doctor at the hospital (Kelly Hu). She proceeds to fall off the pier after her knapsack is stolen by the aforementioned runaway, and is plucked from the sea by a hunky lifeguard (Timothy Adams). An e-mail romance with a mysterious, brooding widower (Clive Robertson) leads her to the seaside community of Sunset Beach. Show began with the defining journey of postwar America, at least from Hollywood's perspective: A Midwestern girl (Susan Ward) leaves her cheating fiance at the altar and heads for the Southern California coast. The glamour machine is sand-clogged from frame one.
Daytime viewers might fantasize about being in a young lifeguard's arms but be reluctant to identify with a runaway teen named Tiffany. Directing and acting should settle down, but the emphasis on twentysomething characters seems risky after viewing the first week's worth of shows. Soaps by definition require time to hit a stride, yet the NBC promo department generated high, and highly titillating, expectations. A land-locked adolescent's view of what a soap opera should be, "Sunset Beach" inhabits the tacky side of sultry, with sophistication and glamour a faint mirage on the orange horizon. Aaron Spelling aims, perhaps inadvertently, at a young demographic in the first new daytime drama to be unspooled in nearly a decade. Cast: Kathleen Noone, Jason George, Kelly Hu, Peter Barton, Susan Ward, Sarah Buxton, Clive Robertson, Sherri Saum, Priscilla Garita, Timothy Adams, Vanessa Dorman, Sam Behrens, Lesley-Anne Down, Randy Spelling, Ashley Hamilton, Leigh Taylor-Young, Laura Harring, Adrienne Frantz, Hank Cheyne, Dax Griffin, Nick Stabile. Duke Vincent, Gary Tomlin co-creators, Robert Guza, Charles Pratt, Josh Griffith supervising producer, Hope Harmel Smith producer, Lisa Hesser coordinating producer, Susan Silkiss directors, Rick Bennewitz, Scott Riggs, Tony Morina head writer, Robert Guza production designer, George Becket sound, Zoli Osace music, Dominic Messinger, Teri Smith, Michael Licari casting, Melinda Gartzman. NBC) Taped in Burbank and on location in Southern California by Spelling Entertainment Inc.