New Melrose Place, cancel or keep?

After months of network hype and mediocre anticipation, the new Melrose Place debuted last night. Like last season’s 90210 update, a couple original castmembers came along for the ride. Does this new version have a chance of sticking around as long as the original?

The first Melrose Place began as a FOX spin-off of the successful Beverly Hills, 90210 series in 1992. It revolves around a group of apartment complex residents played by Thomas Calabro, Josie Bissett, Andrew Shue), Courtney Thorne-Smith, Grant Show, Doug Savant, Vanessa A. Williams, and Amy Locane. The show wasn’t an immediate success and didn’t start to really gain steam until Heather Locklear joined the regular cast as ambitious Amanda Woodward in season two. The campy drama went through a lot of cast changes over the years and finally ended after seven seasons in 1999.

Though the CW network hasn’t had much success with their new 90210, the execs decided to try reviving Melrose Place as well. It takes place in the same apartment complex and features a whole new cast of young and sexy characters, played by Katie Cassidy, Colin Egglesfield, Stephanie Jacobsen, Jessica Lucas, Michael Rady, Shaun Sipos, and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz. To try to attract some original series fans, the producers included Calabro and Laura Leighton and even killed one of them off in the pilot.

For whatever reason though, the new version of Melrose hasn’t inspired the buzz that 90210 did and far fewer people were lured into taking a peek.

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Last night’s Melrose premiere attracted just 2.27million viewers and a 1.3/4 rating/share of the 18-49 demographic. That put the debut in fourth place in its timeslot, well behind NBC’s America’s Got Talent, CBS’s Big Brother, and ABC’s weak Shaq Vs series.

That’s hardly a good start for CW’s Melrose and it’s very likely that future week’s numbers will be even worse, especially once the other networks start debuting their new Fall programming.

Did you tune in? If so, will you come back next week to learn more clues about the big murder? Based on these numbers you have to wonder if the new Melrose will be around long enough for the crime to be solved.

What do you think? Cancel it or keep it?

More about: Melrose Place, Melrose Place (2009)