"Real friends stab you in the front"
- Anonymous
Official description: This sudsy drama from Aaron Spelling focuses on the lives and loves of young adults in an apartment complex in Los Angeles. From the complicated scheming of scandals to the murderous plots of lovers, the residents at Melrose Place are more messed up than average folk.
Info in IMDb
Ah, the nineties! Memories of my university days, Kurt Cobain's furry cardigans and subsequent suicide, Newtown when it was still affordably squalid... and Melrose Place.
This loopy soap opera was my favourite show when I was in my twenties. I loved it so much I ordered the DVDs back in pre-streaming days. Unfortunately I couldn’t get my hands on Seasons 6 and 7, so I was thrilled to find out that Melrose Place is now available on the new streaming service Paramount+... I am now catching up on all the episodes I could vaguely remember from when I first watched the show in the nineties, but hadn’t been able to find on DVD.
Melrose Place was so popular back in the day that just about everyone at the girls’ on-campus college I was living in when I was 19 attended weekly viewings in the common room. It was also the only soap to have a prime time slot in the evening. Trashy and distasteful it may be, but now that I’ve had a chance to rewatch it, I can see why it was such a hit….
Melrose Place follows the lives, loves and catastrophes of a group of 20-somethings living in a hip Spanish-style apartment block on Melrose Avenue in the famous entertainment district of Los Angeles. The format harkens back to the sixties soap opera Peyton Place, but Melrose does something rather clever with the genre of soap opera… it becomes a parody of itself, such that the show’s theatrics and drama become so overblown and ridiculous it veers into comedy gold.
The show started as a rather sanitary and dull spin off of the teen drama Beverly Hills 90210. Although Melrose was conceived as a program for adults, where it's forerunner was designed for teens, Season 1 is about as insipid as 90210 and doesn’t do much to maintain interest, but persist and you shall be rewarded. In Season 2 Melrose Place becomes its own beast, presenting stories of a more sensational nature such as blackmail, revenge, insanity, addiction and love gone very wrong. Later seasons continued these themes gaining the show the reputation it holds today. I'm also pretty sure Melrose Place was the first mainstream TV show to feature women having fistfights.
Melrose Place is a show about the twisted paths life may take for those who desire to win at all costs. One way to read the show is as a comment on the decade just gone, the 1980s. Melrose Place gives us the archetypal rugged American individualist as a card-carrying and sometimes homicidal psycho. The Machiavellian schemes of its’ characters as they vie for position against each other would, in the real world, qualify these shiny-faced and trendily-attired young yuppies as outright sociopaths. Like the later show Mad Men, Melrose offers a little light relief for its pervasive tawdry darkness in the form of moral characters such as Jane Andrews and, later, hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Megan. But the show’s most awful characters are also its most entertaining and watchable: arch-villain/clown Michael Mancini is a comedic work of art with salty and sarcastic lines such as “What was I thinking? That you'd actually listen to me? That you'd actually stay out of my life? Course you won't. You can't. You haven't got the capabilities! It's like asking an ape to do algebra!”
And who can forget ever-mouthy manipulative tramp Taylor McBride and her fake pregnancy? Alcoholic Alison Parker giving every person in the building a slurring serve? Crazy Kimberly Shaw who survives a murder attempt by husband Michael and returns from the dead to haunt the rest of his days? Or ice-Queen ballbusting advertising executive Amanda Woodward who marries every male character of the cast at least once?
The storylines in Melrose Place are so crazy that the implausibility does not detract, rather enhances - after all, we can’t be sure we are watching drama or satire. Try and imagine a show that has the balls to depict the following scenario with a straight face: Jennifer Mancini, Michael’s little sister, has told her meddling Italian mother who is visiting from New Jersey that she is engaged to the wealthy and handsome Craig Field, who in fact has a serious case of commitment phobia and has recently skipped town entirely for destinations unknown. Jennifer persuades neighbour and friend Billy Campbell to pretend to “be” Craig Field while her mother is in town… but during the family dinner with Michael, her mother and Billy-as-Craig, she receives a phone call from the police advising her that her ex Craig has been found dead in his car from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Now Jennifer somehow has to maintain the ruse and play it straight through the rest of dinner!
One of the best things about this show is the witty and often scathing verbal shots exchanged between characters. Here’s a little from my favourite Michael.
Where to watch Melrose Place: https://www.tvguide.com
About the author: OJ Modjeska is a true crime author who reads a lot of books and watches a lot of movies and TV shows. Bestselling titles include "Gone: Catastrophe in Paradise" and the "Murder by Increments" series. Currently seeking representation to option my books for the screen.
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