This hour-long Northern Exposure knockoff featured Seamus O’Neill (Fisher Stevens) – a bookish New Jersey factory worker with a miserable life and alcoholic parents who is going nowhere fast.
Then one day Seamus – who has always dreamed of being a writer – wins the New Jersey State Lottery and moves to Key West where Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway lived.
Desperate to follow in Hemingway’s footsteps, he begs the local newspaper editor for a job: “I want to do what he did,” Seamus says. “You want to cover the Spanish Civil War?” retorts the gruff ‘King’ Cole (Ivory Ocean), the bombastic blind editor of the Key West Meteor.
Seamus gets his shot and plunges into the life of Key West – a mayoral race, a proposed development that would close down a dolphin research centre, and a local bar called ‘Gumbo’s’, where exotic dancers writhe before awestruck sailors.
There he meets bar owner Gumbo Beausoleil (Leland Crooke), philosophical Rastafarian JoJo (Terrence ‘TC’ Carson) and the island’s priciest prostitute, Savannah Sumner (Jennifer Tilly).
Chaucy Caldwell (Bing’s granddaughter, Denise Crosby) is the pro-pavement mayoral candidate who says, “This development will bring in $100 million, and for that, I would barbecue Flipper. And eat him”. A semi-sane Sheriff Cody (Brian Thompson) parachutes onto the scene and declares his credo – “My personal heroes are Ted Nugent, Buddha and Davy Crockett” – before roaring off on a motorcycle.
The pilot and 12 episodes were all shot on location in Key West, including on streets in the historic district, at the Key West Lighthouse and at Fort Zachary Taylor (built before the Civil War).
Seamus O’Neill
Fisher Stevens Chaucy Caldwell
Denise Crosby Rikki
Lara Piper Sheriff Cody Jeremiah Jefferson
Brian Thompson Paul ‘Gumbo’ Beausoleil
Leland Crooke Abednigo ‘JoJo’ Nabuli
Terrence (TC) Carson Hector Allegria
Geno Silva Roosevelt ‘King’ Cole
Ivory Ocean Savannah Sumner
Jennifer Tilly Dr Reilly Clarke
Kim Myers Hunter Fisher
Michael Covert Flame
Jennifer Barlow
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