UTV to air soap opera

It is just past 8:30 on a Monday night, someone just finished off your popcorn and everybody has already slept with everybody else on Melrose Place. You think to yourself, "I could do that better than Aaron Spelling, if only?" Four University students did just that each week. Until one day last fall, when they stopped saying "what if" and started to say "when." In October Wharton sophomores, Dan Khatib and Andrew Simonian and College sophomores Alex Saltzman and Andrew Waller began working on Locust Walk, a situational drama that will be broadcast on University Television Channel 13. "We watched the shows and thought it was time to put up or shut up," Khatib said. "So we started working." According to Todd Donovan, an Engineering senior and president and general manager of UTV13, this is not the first time the station has offered a show purely for entertainment value -- although it is the first time a program of this sort has been scheduled to air in about seven years. The four students are working as fast as possible to finish their first episode. They are currently rewriting the script to fit the actors who were cast last week, Khatib said. The premier episode will be taped before spring break and will debut sometime after the break, he added. Although they would not identify specific plot lines, the producers said the format of Locust Walk will resemble the popular Fox shows Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. "I don't want to give anything away too much," Simonian said. "Hopefully it will be better than Melrose Place and 90210 -- a little less cheesy and funnier." Khatib emphasized the show's sense of humor and reality. "First and foremost it's going to be funnier," he said. "We're not going to have as many murders or trials or be as melodramatic. And nobody's baby is going to be kidnapped -- at least not in the first episode." Saltzman said the show would be an improved version of the television dramas. But it is definitely not a situation comedy. "Like 90210 and Melrose but hopefully slightly more witty and cerebral than your average trashy soap," he said. Out of over 90 students who auditioned for the drama last week, the producers chose four male and five female students as the show's recurring cast. One actor, College sophomore Matt Kapuchinski, said he did not know anything about the show except what one of the writers told him about his character. "I'll probably be playing a character that's a guitarist/musician kind of quiet guy," he said. "As far as I know they haven't really flushed out each character yet. We're playing it by ear." Ideally the show will run once a week by the end of the semester, Khatib said. Saltzman said he thinks the campus will be "receptive" to the show, but he said that availability is one concern for the show's success. "Although the whole campus is not wired and Rodin seems to be holding up getting UTV on cable we will be having special showings in Houston Hall Auditorium when the show premiers and for subsequent episodes until we do get on local cable," he said. The producers also chose a team of writers and technicians last week. In addition, College sophomore Nina Wolarsky joined the show as a co-producer.