Teen angst, antics in ‘Hidden Palms’

A wildly uneven but nevertheless fairly engrossing teenage soap-opera murder mystery, “Hidden Palms” premieres belatedly tonight on the CW, having pushed back from March to the edge of June. While much of it is silly, corny or cliched and relies more on easy effects -- the power ballad, the overwrought sex scene -- than on the subtle explorations of people and place that the pilot seems to promise, the series is, on the whole, highly digestible summer fun. And here and there, in a look or a line or the framing of a shot, it grows into something big.

Concerned as it is with precocious rich kids and their troublesome parents, living in an exclusive Palm Springs community, “Hidden Palms” would seem to present a kind of inland “The O.C.” -- all the more so as its male leads, Taylor Handley and Michael Cassidy, are “O.C.” vets. It would be better described, however, as an amalgam of creator Kevin Williamson’s two best-known projects, “Dawson’s Creek” (on which Handley also appeared) and the “Scream” franchise, with the emphasis slightly on the former.

As did “Dawson’s Creek,” “Hidden Palms” begins with the arrival in town of a young person with a past and a problem. Here, it is Hamlet-sullen Johnny (Handley), just out of rehab and following mother Gail O’Grady and stepfather D.W. Moffett -- who have married in haste, like Gertrude and Claudius -- from Seattle to Palm Springs. By the end of the first episode he will meet an Ophelia named Greta (Amber Heard), and by the end of the second a ghost -- sort of -- not of his father but of the boy who killed himself in Johnny’s new bedroom.

Also new to his life are Cliff (Cassidy) -- the Reggie, in “Archie” terms -- who lives next door to Johnny and has a gothic sense of humor and an unusually close relationship with his mother (Sharon Lawrence). (We see him removing the bandages from her latest nose job: “It’s bruised,” he says, “but it looks like the nose two noses ago.” “Well,” replies his mother, encouraged, “that’s what we want.”) And there is Liza (Ellary Porterfield), who first appears as a figure in a hazmat suit, gazing from the garage across the street. She is what you might call nerd-cute -- not hot enough to date the lead, even though she’d like to -- and she may be the series’ Nancy Drew, or its Tom Swift, or something darker.

The kids are all enigmas, except Johnny -- who is merely a mess -- and his old rehab friend Nikki (Tessa Thompson, making a strong impression), who is also a mess, and a bigger mess, but a mess without secrets. Still, all claim to be different from what other people think they are, and as revelation piles upon revelation, each only grows harder to pin down. The whole show might be seen as a giant metaphor for the adolescent feeling of being misunderstood.

Except for Porterfield, however, none is a genuine teenager. This is standard TV practice, of course, and here as elsewhere a mitigating strategy to make the underage sex and drinking more acceptable. Because it’s easier to sell statutory rape on prime-time network television when it’s obvious that the younger party is played by someone actually well over the age of consent.

From scene to scene the show can play as preposterous, mysterious, suspenseful or moving -- depending not only on what the actors are required to do or say but also on which actors are doing it or saying it. Leslie Jordan, who appears in a few episodes as Johnny’s drag queen AA sponsor and lets Nikki sleep on his couch, is welcome every moment he’s on screen; other actors grow more real playing around him. As much holds for Kyle Secor, as Greta’s awful but possibly not irredeemable lawyer father.

Of the seven episodes I’ve seen, the first two, written by Williamson and directed by fellow executive producer Scott Winant (“Huff,” “My So-Called Life”) have, not surprisingly, the most flair and feeling. As is often the case, the pilot benefits from having been filmed in the place it is set -- the production moved from Palm Springs to Phoenix afterward, and the difference shows. The local texture the pilot takes as part of its subject dissolves into the more usual business of revealing an Awful Truth. Tim Suhrstedt (“Little Miss Sunshine,” “Grey’s Anatomy”), who photographed the pilot, has done a fine job of translating the colorful shimmer of the desert light and of capturing the poetry in its night -- it brings out the best in the text, and helps evoke that sense of immanence peculiar to being young, that moment when one still believes the world to be a place that can be known and feels oneself on the edge of knowing it.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

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‘Hidden Palms’

Where: The CW

When: 8 to 9 tonight

Rating: TV-PG-LV (may be unsuitable for young children, with advisories for coarse language and violence)