Pacific Palisades

1 9 9 7 (USA)
13 x 60 minute episodes

This short-lived Aaron Spelling soap was set in the pricy So-Cal enclave of Pacific Palisades and featured a cavalcade of sleek young professionals – architects, businessmen, real estate agents, plastic surgeons – who were continually wheeling and dealing and coupling and uncoupling as they sought money, sex and love in the land of fun and sun.

As with most Spelling productions, the cast featured a bevvy of attractive, gorgeous, handsome, beautiful and sexy young actors and actresses.

Joanna and Nick Hadley (Michelle Stafford and Jarrod Emick) – the seemingly innocent and uncorrupted couple in an otherwise adulterous lair of trickery and deceit – had recently moved to California from the Midwest. They were looking after Joanna’s little sister, Rachel Whittaker (Natalia Cigliuti), who was meant to be a high school student but looked older than a college student.

It eventually turned out that Rachel was, in fact, Joanna’s daughter as a result of her being raped by Richard Hughes (Michael Horton).

Finola Hughes was Kate Russo, who set her career aside for family life with her husband Robert (Greg Evigan), the owner of the Pacific Palisades Realty Company who was having an affair with his secretary, Jessica Mitchell (Jocelyn Seagrave).

Other characters included Cory Robbins (Joel Wyner, later replaced in the role by Dylan Neal), a manipulative plastic surgeon who stood to make a fortune in a place like Pacific Palisades; Laura Sinclair (Australian actress Kimberley Davies), who looked like an all-lips, all-bosom mutation of Pamela Anderson but was supposedly the top real estate agent in the area (and wasn’t averse to sleeping with a potential house buyer to make a sale); and womanising contractor Matt Dunning (former Diet Coke commercial star Lucky Vanous).

The show’s ratings never met expectations, even when classic vamp Joan Collins was added for seven episodes as “Special Guest Star” in a rescue attempt, playing Laura’s arch-bitch mother, Christina Hobson.

The series was gone by the end of July.

Robert Russo
Greg Evigan
Kate Russo
Finola Hughes
Jessica Mitchell
Jocelyn Seagrave
Matt Dunning
Lucky Vanous
Cory Robbins
Joel Wyman (1)
Dylan Neal (2)
Joanna Hadley
Michelle Stafford
Nick Hadley
Jarrod Emick
Rachel Whittaker
Natalia Cigliuti
Christina Hobson
Joan Collins
Beth Hooper
Brittney Powell
Laura Sinclair
Kimberly Davies
Michael Kerris
J. Trevor Edmond
Ashley MacInally
Jennifer Banko
John Graham
Paul Satterfield
Frank Nichols
Gianni Russo
Richard Hughes
Michael Horton