Melrose Place 2.0

I used to love this show back in the 90s so I am delighted to hear that Melrose Place is back, better and bigger. Melrose Place was one of the most successful show of it’s era as well being as a pop culture phenomenon it received tremendous media kudos. The show was so hip it made the cover of Rolling Stone but sadly it came to an end in 1999. Now ten years later it is back with a new look and a new cast. The focus is on the lives of cool and stylish twenty-somethings from a wide variety of backgrounds who live in a trendy apartment complex in Melrose which is a hip area in LA.

There is Ella Simms played by Katie Cassidy who is a smart, savvy, up-and-coming publicist who is determined to get where she wants at any costs. She persuades Jonah Miller, a struggling filmmaker who is played by Michael Rady to let her manage him much to the dismay of his live in fiancée Riley Richmond played by Jessica Lucas who is a school teacher. Riley confides her reservations to medical student, Lauren Yung played by Stephanie Jacobsen but Lauren has problems of her own; she is in a lot of debt and must come up with a creative way to pay her tuition. Then there is Auggie Kirkpatrick a sensitive sous chef with a dark past played by Colin Egglesfield. The new kid on the block is Violet Foster played by Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, a small town girl who moves to LA and has a deep secret. Last but not least is the rebellious David Breck played by Shaun Sipos who is the estranged son of Dr. Michael Mancini (who was in the original Melrose Place) played by Thomas Calabro. We can look forward to seeing him pop up in the show from time to time and doing battle with Sydney Andrews played by Laura Leighton – his former sparring partner. Sydney is now the landlady of the complex but is still as devious as ever and is a force in the lives of all the characters. The remake plans to attract fans of the old series while picking up new viewers for the new show.

"We were huge fans of the original but when we set out to do our version, we wanted to pay tribute to the old show but create our own show with our own characters," says Todd Slavkin, executive producer.

Check out a post I wrote about the stars of the original Melrose Place and where they are now.

Melrose Place airs on CWTV this autumn.