The US soap opera Sunset Beach aired on NBC at 11:00 AM from January 6, 1997 to December 31, 1999. It was coproduced by NBC and Aaron Spelling Productions. It also aired in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Its lead star was the notable Lesley-Anne Down, who played depressed and desperate rich housewife Olivia. Others in the cast include Laura Harring, Kelly Hu, Barbara Mandrell, Kathleen Noone, and Susan Ward. Cast members who were nominated for various soap opera awards included Hank Cheyne, Margarita Cordova, Priscilla Garita, Jason Winston George, Sherri Saum, Clive Robertson, Eddie Cibrian, Sam Behrens, Dominique Jennings, Sarah Buxton, Jeffery Wood, and Ashley Monique Clark.

The soap opera was named after the small beach community located at the northwest corner of Huntington Beach, California just south of Seal Beach, California and the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.

Storylines in its nearly three year run ranged from the traditional to the supernatural. The premise of the show was an internet romance. Kansas farm girl Meg Cummings, played by Susan Ward, discovered her groom to be, Tim Truman, cheating on her on their wedding day. Meg had been talking online with SB, a man who lived in Sunset Beach, California, and after catching Tim with another woman, Meg fled to Sunset Beach in search of SB, who turned out to be wealthy, widowed businessman Ben Evans, played by Clive Robertson.

Meg and Ben became one of the shows primary supercouples, along with reformed jewel thief Cole Deschanel and local heiress Caitlin Richards. Cole also slept with- and impregnated- Caitlin's unhappily married, alcoholic mother Olivia.

When the show began it was the only soap on the air featuring Asian American characters, though they were written off before the end of the first year. The show also had daytime television's only African American villainess, Virginia Harrison, who plotted and schemed to break up lifeguard Michael and reporter Vanessa so she could have Michael for herself. In one of the most outrageous storylines on the show, Virginia drugged Vanessa and, using a turkey baster and some stolen sperm from a sperm bank, impregnated her with the child of Dr. Tyus Robinson, to make it appear Vanessa had been unfaithful to Michael, who was sterile.

The show was known for other outrageous storylines, such as the Terror Island storyline in which several of the show's main characters were stranded on an island with a masked serial killer, seemingly intent on killing them all, especially Meg. A handful of characters, including fan favorite Mark Wolper, were killed by the maniac. In his dying moments, Mark pulled off the killer's mask and audiences where stunned to see Ben's face behind it.

As it turned out, Ben had an evil twin, Derek, who would continue to plague his and Meg's lives for the rest of the run of the show.

Another outrageous storyline was the earthquake/tsunami story, in which Sunset Beach was struck by a massive Earthquake, trapping many characters- most of them each other's rival- together in life and death situations. While half the cast battled the disaster on land, the rest of the cast was on a pleasure cruise aboard a ship that was overturned- a la The Poseidon Adventure- by a tsunami created by the earthquake. This storyline was nearly a carbon copy of the Poseidon Adventure, more a copycat than an homage.

The show took a supernatural turn for awhile with some cursed jewels stolen from a religious icon, that turned those who'd touched them into shriveled mummies. The story culminated on Christmas Eve with the return of the jewels to the Madonna just in time to prevent the deaths of several key characters.

Other storylines were more traditional, such as the scheming Annie stealing Olivia and Cole's baby at birth and giving it to an unwitting Caitlin to pass off as the baby she'd miscarried. Or the return from the dead of Ben's amnesic wife Maria who, it turned out, had been held captive for five years by Derek, and the appearance of a child, Benjy, who was supposedly Ben and Maria's son, though it turned out that he was actually the child of Derek and Nanny/accomplice Tess, who planned to murder Ben and have him leave his fortune to the boy so they could control it.

The show also featured two murder mysteries in its run, the murder of Annie's father Del Douglas (by Cole's mother, Elaine- Del had kidnaped Cole as a baby and convinced Elaine the child was dead) and the murder of seductress Francesca Vargas, who just about everyone in town wanted dead. The surprise twist in the Who Shot Francesca storyline was that it was main character Gregory Richards.

The show went in for stunt casting guest appearances- Jerry Springer played Talk Show Host Jerry Feller, Marla Maples played socialite Barbara Birch, Judge Wapner played himself- and featured a ripped from the headline story about a Washington Intern, Meg's sister Sara, who'd had an affair with a married politician. Her affair was exposed by her supposed friend- Melinda Fall, a take off on Linda Tripp.

The show was cancelled just before the 3rd anniversary of its original air date. Most of the main characters were given happy endings, as supercouple Ben and Meg married. In a twist ending, Meg appeared to wake up in Kansas and realize that the entire three years in Sunset Beach had been a dream- and the characters from the show were actually her friends and family in Kansas. However, at the last minute, Meg woke up from her dream-within-a-dream and was in bed with Ben, the day after their wedding.

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