Wild Palms 

A multi-national corporation attempts to take over America while small pockets of resistance hold out against rampant technology.

Creator:

Bruce Wagner

Stars:

Jim Belushi, Dana Delany, Robert Loggia

Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy. Another 3 nominations.

Cast

Complete series cast summary:
Jim Belushi	...	Harry Wyckoff 5 episodes, 1993
Dana Delany	...	Grace Wyckoff 5 episodes, 1993
Robert Loggia	...	Sen. Anton Kreutzer 5 episodes, 1993
Kim Cattrall	...	Paige Katz 5 episodes, 1993
Angie Dickinson	...	Josie Ito 5 episodes, 1993
Ernie Hudson	...	Tommy Lazlo 5 episodes, 1993
Bebe Neuwirth	...	Tabba Schwartzkopf 5 episodes, 1993
Nick Mancuso	...	Tully Woiwode 5 episodes, 1993
David Warner	...	Eli Levitt 5 episodes, 1993
Ben Savage	...	Coty Wyckoff 5 episodes, 1993
Bob Gunton	...	Dr. Tobias Schenkl 5 episodes, 1993
Aaron Michael Metchik	...	Peter 5 episodes, 1993
Robert Morse	...	Chap Starfall 3 episodes, 1993
Brad Dourif	...	Chickie Levitt 3 episodes, 1993
Charles Rocket	...	Stitch 3 episodes, 1993
François Chau	...	Hiro 3 episodes, 1993
Beata Pozniak	...	Tambor 3 episodes, 1993
Charles Hallahan	...	Gavin Whitehope 2 episodes, 1993
Eugene Lee	...	Lt. Bob Grindrod 2 episodes, 1993
Rondi Reed	...	Eileen Whitehope 2 episodes, 1993
Stephen Brailo	...	Valet Boy 2 episodes, 1993

Storyline

LA in the near future, Harry Wykoff accepts a job as presidents of a gigantic TV company. Het is confronted with a total new technology called "The New Reality" where three-dimensional TV animated pictures are projected in living rooms all around the world. Harry launches to the top of the company with his career but once there he is caught in a web of intrigues, betrayal and murder. A game of life and death begins...

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Plot Keywords:

apocalypse | family relationships | murder | corporation | religious overtones | 

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Genres:

Drama | Mystery | Thriller | Sci-Fi

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

16 May 1993 (USA)

Also Known As:

Wild Palms

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles City Hall - 200 North Spring Street, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Greengrass Productions, Ixtlan

Technical Specs

Runtime:

300 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The series takes place in 2007.

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Goofs

The rear-view mirror in Harry's corvette appears and disappears from scene to scene.

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Quotes

Harry Wyckoff: [upon recognizing "Running To Paradise"] That's Yeats!
Sen. Anton Kreutzer: Harry, you'll make me fall in love with you!

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Connections

References One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

User Reviews

A love letter to Phillip K. Dick

How to describe this series? Imagine if Shakespeare was alive during the late sixties and seventies and decided to write a sci-fi epic at the height of the early nineties hype about virtual reality, and you'd only be in the same ballpark.

The story? Okay, the story revolves around an unassuming family man, Harry, who only begins to realize the strangeness that is going on around him. A secret police force are kidnapping people. His daughter refuses to speak. His son is developing some violent behavior. His wife is withdrawing into a bottle. And a strange woman from his past is offering him a glimpse at a world he could only imagine before.

Combining elements of Japanese and Eastern myths, Phillip K. Dick's quest for reality, Twin Peak's surreality, a grand opera's sweep, and science fiction's imagination, Wild Palms sets up the dominos of a world that could be and then lets them fall.

Harry is drawn into the New Age cult of a powerful senator who is about to transform the world by introducing a new form of media - one that is so close to being real that it's often hard to tell the difference. If you had the choice of this world, or a world of your own creation, which would you choose? But what if that world was being controlled by someone with their own agenda? And as the world starts to deal with those questions, a group of libertarian `Friends' attempt to stop the senator any way they can. Two powerful houses will fight until there is only one remaining.

This is not a series for everyone. It isn't sci-fi in the genre of Star Trek like most television fans are used to. It's also told in the fashion of an opera, with high melodrama and amazing leaps of logic. And lest you think that it is heavy, it also has some great patches of absurdity. But it is thought provoking, and has something to say about technology, religion, power, politics, drug use, and a range of other topics. And it says it in a way that doesn't speak down or make the audience feel they are being unduly manipulated. It is fine television for a very small audience.