UPN isn't taking any chances.

Its new Friday night series has all the family values goodness of Little House on the Prairie pumped with the sexual charge of Beverly Hills 90210. And there's cool music.

This is post-Civil War Kentucky, and the action in Legacy centers on hunky widower Ned Logan and his children, three libidinous sons and two sweet daughters.

The cast of largely unknowns is headed by Brett Cullen of the 1989 television series Young Riders. Cullen looks a bit young to play the wise patriarch, and the script doesn't help matters. He bandies about lines like "this land means everything to us" and "I think this next year is going to be a good one for the Logan family."

The wooden dialogue is somehow forgivable because the Logans are so attractive. Eldest son Sean is obedient and intense, Clay is the fireball, and Jeremy Bradford is the streetwise orphan who scammed his way into the family. These young actors, culled from soap operas, are dreamy Teen Beat magazine material.

Alice, the eldest girl, has taken on the role of surrogate mother. Strangely though, she looks like a much-corseted version of Monica Lewinsky.

The youngest is Lexy, a sparky young thing with freckles and braids. Think Melissa Gilbert at 12.

In the premiere tonight at 8, the hot-tempered siblings race thoroughbreds through a lush countryside, the family battles a barn fire, a woman is jilted and the eldest son reveals his love for the daughter of a former slave. Whew!

Despite the pretense that this is Kentucky of 1881, the influence of 90210 has a way of rearing its contemporary head. The men use hair gel and Lorenna McKennitt's pop hit The Mummers' Dance is a signature for the drama.

And, alas, these Kentucky folk don't have Southern accents. The producers aren't slaves to historical detail.

© Akron Beacon Journal