Pilot

Midway stripper Lane Ballou (Cristina Raines) quits the carnival before it leaves Truro County, Florida. She meets deputy sheriff Fielding Carlyle (Mark Harmon) and they begin a fling. Carlyle, son of a respected judge and fiancé of Constance Weldon (Morgan Fairchild) - daughter of town power baron Claude Weldon (Kevin McCarthy) has a future planned out for him that the wrong kind of woman might jeopardize.

The crooked sheriff Titus Semple (Howard Duff) who is grooming Carlyle, railroads the mysterious Lane out of town. Semple's manipulations enable the wealthy and powerful who live on Flamingo Road - the town's most exclusive neighbourhood, to hold on to what they have. Continually Semple must also remind Flamingo Road residents that a price must be paid. Their lives need to be lived a certain way to keep things as they are.

Life in Truro County is not disrupted by love for long. Marriages are arranged to manage social order. As a result there is a lot of heartbreak and lamentation communicated between residents in stolen moments.

Lane returns unexpectedly but not in time to offer objection to Carlyle's marriage to Constance. Instead Lane takes a job working for Lute Mae Sanders (Stella Stevens) - owner & main hostess of a cabaret/brothel. There Lane meets wealthy playboy Sam Curtis (John Beck) and because of Semple's fear of him she is able to stay in town.

This is what night-time soaps used to be. Almost all the people were beautiful. Their surroundings were a little too opulent and none of the work they did to get where they were in life was depicted. Too much happened in too short a period of time for it to seem real or have the real impact on the narrative that it might have.

But at very least it was a starting point for the exploration of relationships between powerful people and family.