FUTURE DECAY! REMEMBERING 'WILD PALMS'

World gone mad. The winners and losers of the cult US mini-series WILD PALMS. Images: MGM.

Following hot on the heels of the popular format that was the eccentric but lovably disturbing character drama of David Lynch's superb and wacky TWIN PEAKS, film making icon Oliver Stone would make one of his early forays into television with the equally enjoyable and often disturbing future dystopia that is WILD PALMS, fondly remembered by fans and audiences as a lavish and creepily atmospheric five-part, six-hour mini-series originally airing on the US ABC network in 1993, and critically acclaimed on the UK's BBC 2 a short time later.

Love triangle. Jim Belushi's Harry with glamorous co-stars Dana Delany as Grace and Kim Cattrall as Paige.

Based on the popular 1990 underground graphic novel strip created by Bruce Wagner (who also adapted the story for TV) originally appearing in the stylish US/Hollywood entertainment and style magazine Details, set in a futuristic Los Angles of 2007 where America has survived a global meltdown of ideology and religious mania, WILD PALMS tells the story of once happy-go-lucky patent lawyer Harry Wyckoff (Jim Belushi) enjoying life with his wife Grace (Dana Delany) and two children but soon finding it all horrifically turned upside down, when an old flame, Paige Katz (the always simmeringly sexy Kim Cattrall pre-SEX AND THE CITY), asks him to help find her missing child. Its an investigation that quickly sees him involved, symbiotically intertwined, with the dark designs and ambitions of a Scientologist-like senator, and head of the powerful CHANNEL 3 TV company, Anton Kruetzer (Robert Loggia- in a career best performance) who wants to control America and the world via a revolutionary new piece of Japanese created interactive television technology. Soon, Harry finds out that his entire life has been a specially forged lie, and his family and friends no longer what they appear, as the long nightmare journey begins to discover the truth about his ultimate place in the soon to be waged new war mixing zealous religious belief and new-age technological superiority.

Super-baddie Robert Loggia with his female acolytes, including Angie Dickinson and Bebe Neuwirth.

Titles and powerfully hypnotic theme music by Ryûichi Sakamoto: Wild Palms: Everything Must Go (Part 1/7) - YouTube

Josie terrorises cyber-whizz Chickie Levitt (Brad Douriff).

Full of eerie symbolism, making the most of its futurized "Hollyweird' environment (taking its eccentricities, people, and dark side vices and then taking it all up a notch, alongside a simmering police state environment and ours, and particularly America's, continued obsession with television and foreign consumer technology), WILD PALMS, despite its all too brief duration (its fifth episode successful wraps up the story but feel all too rushed), would be a minor masterpiece of its time, with a delicious supporting cast including Angie Dickinson as Harry's incredibly evil and ambitious "Grandmother from Hell", Josie Ito (who, in one memorable scene gouges out the eyes of one of her victims), THE WONDER YEARS Ben Savage as as Harry's psychotic "son", Cody (who, from episode two, starts building up the shows body count), CHEERS Bebe Neuwirth (as a vain Hollywood actress), Bob Gunton (as Harry's untrustworthy psychiatrist, Dr. Tobias Schenkl (looking like he's wandered off, or even escaped from, the set of THE ADDAMS FAMILY), Brad Douriff (as an imprisoned virtual reality computer programmer, wondrously named Chickie Levitt), LOST's "Mister Dharma Initiative"- Francois Chao- as the mysterious but loyal Hiro, plus GHOSTBUSTERS Ernie Hudson and film and TV series veteran David Warner (playing vital members of a building resistance movement), the series, whose behind the scenes credit pedigree would include OSCAR-winning director Katherine Bigelow and cinematographer Wally Pfister, has held up very well since its original broadcast and is well worth rediscovering.

Oh, and watch out for the Rhino!

Get WILD PALMS on DVD here: Wild Palms - Series 1 - Complete [1993] [DVD]: Amazon.co.uk: Oliver Stone: Film & TV