Picture this, Legacy fans: The UPN family drama was originally supposed to feature a missionary couple, a lot more orphans and the lush, tropical backdrop of Hawaii instead of the show's current late 19th-century Kentucky horse farm. That's how creator and executive producer Chris Abbott first imagined it. "I've always thought turn-of-the-century Hawaii would be an interesting place," says Abbott, whose stint as a writer and producer on Magnum, P.I. made her fall in love with the state. "I took it in to UPN and they said, 'Boy, we really love this idea, but we were thinking bluegrass.' I left their offices, found out everything I could on bluegrass and horses, and within a week came back with, 'Well, I have this idea about bluegrass.'"

In its current incarnation, Legacy (Fridays, 8 pm/ET) follows the adventures of the Logans, an Irish-American family headed up by a widowed dad (Brett Cullen). Abbott says she had no idea so many other Irish-themed shows were in the works — this season also brought us Fox's Costello, CBS' To Have & to Hold and NBC's Trinity — and was amazed to see the new schedule. "I don't think anybody talked to anybody else," she says. "That was so weird. Irish on TV. It's like a virus in the air that everybody got."

Of those shows, Legacy is the only period series. That unique quality, however, carries its own challenges: Even though Abbott worked on both "Little House on the Prairie" and "Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman," she occasionally has trouble staying true to the era. "I wrote a script where someone gets shot, and Sean [the eldest son] goes, 'Somebody call the doctor!'" she says. "It made it all the way to almost shooting before we realized there were no phones."

© 1998 TV Guide