Wild Palms

Comic strip basis of the 5-hour miniseries from 1993.

In the United States in the year 2007, the right-wing "Fathers" dominate large sections in politics and in the media. A libertarian movement, the "Friends", opposes the government, often making use of underground guerrilla tactics. The Fathers' leader is California's Senator Tony Kreutzer, who is also the leader of the religious sect "Church of Synthiotics" (similar to Scientology) and owner of the "Wild Palms" media group. Kreutzer's TV station "Channel 3" is about to start a new television format, "Church Windows", which creates a virtual reality on the basis of popular shows like sitcoms, using a new technique called "Mimecom".

Harry Wyckoff is a successful patent attorney on the brink of becoming a partner in the legal agency where he works. He has two children with his wife Grace, a perfect housewife who also moonlights as a boutique owner: 11-year-old Coty, who has just been cast for the new "Channel 3" series, and the ever-silent 4-year-old Deirdre. His mother-in-law is the impossibly chic socialite and interior decorator Josie Ito, a woman of strong will and numerous connections. At night, Wyckoff is plagued by strange dreams of a rhinoceros and a faceless woman who has palm trees tattooed on her body.

One day, he is visited by a former lover of his college days, the alluring Paige Katz, who asks for his help in tracking down her son Peter, who disappeared five years earlier. As Paige is closely associated with Kreutzer's "Wild Palms Group", which Wyckoff's firm is going up against in court, their meetings raise suspicions and cost Wyckoff his promotion. After this, he gladly accepts when Kreutzer offers him a job at "Channel 3" with an even higher salary.

In the wake of his new career, Harry's wife Grace becomes alienated from him and attempts suicide. To his dismay, Harry learns that Coty is actually the son of Kreutzer and Paige, and that her search request was a plot to bring him and the Senator together. Meanwhile, Coty not only becomes a child TV star but also, due to his ruthlessness, a high-ranking member of the "Church of Synthiotics". Grace's mother turns out to be the Senator's sister who disposes of possible rivals with the same violently brutal means as her brother. Her only weak point is her former marriage to Eli Levitt, leader of the "Friends" and Grace's father, with whom she is still in love.

Kreutzer tries to get hold of the "Go chip", which supposedly will enable him (via his hologram technology, mimizine drug, and synthiotics becoming common household products) to become a living hologram with unlimited power; he does not even stop at murder. Disgusted by his methods, his fiancé Paige gives information to the "Friends". Harry discovers that Peter, a boy who has connections to the "Friends", is his real son who was taken away by the "Fathers" shortly after his birth. Kreutzer, who suspects Harry of collaborating with his opponents, has him tortured and kidnaps his daughter Deirdre, while Josie throttles her own daughter, Grace, to death.

Harry joins the "Friends" and works to broadcast a recording of Grace's murder. The broadcast causes a social uproar. "Synthiotics" facilities and the campaign offices of Kreutzer, who is running for president, are attacked. Even a transmission of a fake video that shows Harry as Grace's murderer, and the secret execution of Eli can't stop the upheaval. Josie is brutally killed by a former victim, Tully Woiwode. Kreutzer finally manages to get hold of the "Go chip" and has it implanted, but not before it is secretly altered by Harry and Peter. Kreutzer reveals to Harry that he is his biological father, just before he loses cohesion and dissolves into nothingness. As Coty, now the leader of the "Fathers", finds his followers dispersed, Harry, Paige, Peter and Deirdre escape the chaos, although Harry knows he must "go back" and lead the "Friends" against their enemies.