Lifetime’s dedicated core of cultural geologists have clearly realized what a rich vein of ratings gas they stumbled upon when they started in on these unauthorized behind-the-scenes stories of beloved ’90s shows, as they’re now fracking the hell out of the idea in an effort to expose the rich slurry of nostalgia and prurient contempt hidden within. The network previously took a vaguely scintillating shot at the behind-the-scenes workings of Saved By The Bell, and its take on the drama underpinning Full House has been battling viciously against that show’s upcoming Netflix revival for space on the front page of all the hottest F-House blogs. (We imagine.)
A few weeks ago, though, Lifetime announced that it would be turning over the rock on a slightly more, let’s say, “mature,” patch of TV juvenalia, treating Beverly Hills, 90210 to the same authorization-free approach. But just as improbably elaborate ’90s hair cannot stand without mousse, 90210 itself cannot stand alone, and it’s now been revealed that its spinoff show, Melrose Place, has also been swept up in the unauthorized tide.
Debuting in 1992, Darren Star’s long-running nighttime soap invited viewers into Melrose Place, a hip, vibrant apartment complex entirely populated by moping post-adolescents and oversexed piles of clothes. The series, which ran for seven years, was an incubator for a wide swathe of young Hollywood talent, many of whom will now get the dubious pleasure of squinting at low-rent modern day equivalents of themselves in the inevitably awful cast photo soon to be released by Lifetime marketing. The most interesting thing about the project so far is the question of whether it’ll be self-contained, or if there’ll be crossover with the similar 90210 film, forming a shared Lifetime Unauthorized Universe via a process we can only bring ourselves to describe as “metastasis.”