Although "Pacific Palisades" is the latest prime-time soap from executive producer Aaron Spelling, don't let that fool you.
"Palisades" has less in common with "Melrose Place" than it does with great shows like "Homefront," "Knots Landing" and even "Avonlea."The common link is creators/executive producers/writers Dianne Messina Stanley and James Stanley, whose credits also include "Hotel Malibu" and "Savannah." When it comes to writing and producing smart, funny, engaging prime-time continuing dramas, they're among the best.
They proved that as the executive producers of the WB's "Savannah" - a genuinely entertaining hour - the past couple of years. And it was that association with Spelling that led to the couple creating "Pacific Palisades" at his suggestion.
(The show runs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on Ch. 13.)
"Initially, they wanted `Melrose' 10 years older - this was a pilot that was written for NBC," Jim Stanley said in a recent telephone interview. "What happened was . . . well, who knows what happens? They passed, although, personally, we think that `Friends' hit, so every show went younger.
"So we looked at the show again, and we rewrote it so that it was a younger show. And it worked, actually, better that way for us."
It worked well enough so that Fox ordered six episodes of the series based solely on the Stanleys' pilot script.
"It's about young professionals in Southern California. We like to say they're young people who have it all, it just isn't paid for yet," Dianne said with a laugh. "They're living a little bit on the edge."
"Los Angeles has this sense of glamour, and they have bought into it," Jim added.
The of characters include Robert and Kate Russo (Greg Evigan and Finola Hughes), an apparently happy couple whose lives are beginning to unravel; Jessica Mitchell (Jocelyn Seagrave), a successful woman with questionable taste in men; Matt Dunning (Lucky Vanous), the somewhat shady owner of a construction business; Laura Sinclair (Kimberley Davies), a real estate agent with questionable ethics; Cory Robbins (Joel Wyner), a promising but manipulative plastic surgeon; and Beth Hooper (Brittney Powell), the object of Cory's affections.
But not all the characters are longtime Southern Californians.
"We've got a hero couple coming from the Midwest who are exposed to it, and they are kind of the viewers' eyes," Jim said.
They are Joanna and Nick Hadley (Michelle Stafford and Jarrod Emick), who move to Pacific Palisades when Nick lands a job at an architectural firm.
And, while the show isn't by any means autobiographical, those two characters do represent the Stanleys to some extent.
"Oh, a lot of it is from personal observation," Dianne said. "We're both Midwesterners, and we've been here awhile. But I'm still a small-town girl, and I'm still kind of amazed sometimes by the things I see."
In the case of both "Savannah" and "Palisades," the Stanleys find themselves working with Spelling, a man who personifies Hollywood. And the fact is that for all of his success - from "The Love Boat" to "Dynasty" to "Beverly Hills, 90210" - Spelling's shows have generally been met with antipathy or worse from TV critics.
Jim and Dianne Stanley are well aware of that, but they're also aware that the Spelling name tends to attract a lot of viewers, too.
"Certainly, no one gets more publicity than Aaron Spelling. His shows draw a lot of attention," Dianne said. "They draw a large audience of people who want to tune in and have a good time. Have fun.
"I would say that this is a series without pretensions. It's a lot of fun."
And Spelling has been more than supportive of their efforts. Fox has ordered six episodes and commissioned seven additional scripts, so that if the ratings are good the show can remain in production and air original episodes well into the summer. That does, of course, present a bit of a problem for the writers - they need to have some sort of payoff at the end of six episodes but at the same time keep all their options open for future installments.
"It's better for (Spelling) if we can wrap things up after six in terms of selling it overseas, but he said, `Just tell the best story,' " Jim said. "He has enormous confidence based on what he's seen and just talking to the network."
"We'll just think optimistically and assume we're going on," Dianne said.
The shows that the Stanleys have written have always been a lot of fun to watch. They're properly intriguing and full of entertaining plot twists, but with the added advantage of being humorous, too.
And it's not like watching "Melrose," which is often so dumb you can't help but laugh at it. You laugh with shows like "Savannah" because they're supposed to be funny.
"Everyone has different tastes, so I'm sure there are some people who would like to see more drama or melodrama," Dianne said. "But, for the most part, we find that people do enjoy it. And I like doing comedy more in this kind of a show, because - unlike a sitcom - you don't have to do set-up, gag, set-up, gag. It can just be a fun scene coming from the characters."
"It's just the way we have tended to write over the years," Jim said.
"And we have a lot of fun doing it," Dianne said.
Not that it's easy coming up with all these scripts. For a while there, it was particularly tough on the Stanleys, who were wrapping up the second season of "Savannah" at the same time they were preparing to launch "Pacific Palisades." They did manage to get three days off at Christmas, but that was it.
The last episode of "Savannah" completed filming on Feb. 12, and the pilot episode of "Pacific Palisades" began shooting on Feb. 28.
"We were still doing post-production on one while we were doing pre-production on the other," Dianne said.
"Right around Christmas, we literally would spend mornings with one staff doing scripts for `Savannah' and afternoons with another staff working on a bible for `Palisades.' "
Despite the workload, the Stanleys love their jobs. And they and the rest of the writers have fun putting the scripts together.
"Particularly when we're outlining, we laugh a lot," Jim said. "But it's a lot of hard work. You've got to go through the hours of - this doesn't work, that doesn't work, we're never going to get it - to get to that point. I feel like we always get there, and I wish there was some way of jumping around those hours or days of nothing, but that's just part of the process."
And the Stanleys' style is not all about fun. As viewers of the shows they've written know, they've tackled serious issues.
`We think that, without getting into necessarily heavy-handed storytelling, that we can make observations about people and life and situations that are still of some value," Dianne said. "We are able, occasionally, to deal with an issue - whether it's alcoholism or child abuse or whatever - and bring a point of view to an audience that might not tune into a show that's just about that."
And that can be particularly rewarding. Like the time a big, burly security guard told "Knots" star Kevin Dobson that because of the show's child abuse storyline, he had stopped hitting his kid.
"It doesn't get any better than that. Because then you really are helping people," Jim said.
At this point, "Palisades" is still in the process of coming together.
"Fox has said that they would like it to be `Knots Landing' for the '90s," Jim said. "Whether it turns out that way, we're still not sure. But we think that there will be the opportunity to be a little more serious than we were in `Savannah.' "
Still, they're not afraid of putting together something that's pure entertainment. Dianne recalled a phone call she got from a friend about a particularly bad day the friend was having.
"And she said, `I just was on my way home almost unable to keep awake and I thought - it's "Savannah" night! . . . I had to call you and tell you that the idea of being able to sit back for an hour and forget about my back pain and my job troubles and all the things that I was going through just meant the world to me,' " Dianne said.
"We just felt great after hearing that - that she could just have an hour of fun."