The first season of Dante's Cove, one of the original series developed by queer television network here!, has just been released on DVD. Described as a hybrid of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Melrose Place and The OC, with splashes of Queer as Folk thrown in, viewers of a certain age will also be reminded of Dark Shadows. Dante's Cove is campy, gothic, mysterious, homoerotic, and a bit silly, but it will definitely find a fan base. Based on season one alone, it's doubtful many lesbians will be among them.

The Hotel Dante, a hotel-turned-apartment-house, is located in Dante's Cove, a beach town on a small island. Both the island and the hotel hold secrets – rumors of ghosts and witches abound. The hotel's residents are conventionally beautiful-looking young people – gay, lesbian, bi, and straight – in their twenties.

Kevin (Gregory Michael) and Toby (openly gay actor Charlie David), the couple at the center of the story, get much of the airtime in season one with both their “real time” and flashback soft-core couplings, including an ocean-side homoerotic homage to From Here to Eternity. Toby's best friend and neighbor is Van (Nadine Heiman), short for Vanessa, a lesbian painter intrigued by the history and secrets of Hotel Dante. After hearing strange voices one night, Kevin unknowingly breaks a 150-year-old spell when he explores the hotel's basement and encounters Ambrosius Vallin (William Gregory Lee), Hotel Dante's version of Barnabas Collins.

In 1840, Ambrosius was set to marry Grace Neville (Tracy Scoggins from The Colbys, the only “name” in season one's cast) when she caught him in flagrante delicto with the butler. Grace, a sorceress who follows a faith called Tresum, casts the spell on Ambrosius that Kevin later breaks with a (coerced) kiss. Ambrosius and Grace meet again in modern-day Dante's Cove, where Ambrosius seeks to get Kevin for himself and Grace vows to never allow that to happen.

Season one ends in a cliffhanger: Van and Toby discover The Book of Tresum in the local historical society, and Van invokes a spell which releases Kevin from Ambrosius' influence. Angered, Ambrosius arranges for Hotel Dante's boy-slut Corey (Josh Berresford), now under Ambrosius' power, to throw Toby off a pier into the sea.

Folks who like male-on-male soft-core porn with a supernatural twist will love Dante's Cove. There is brief full frontal male nudity at the very beginning of disk one; other than that, it's all bare boy butts and chests. (Is it a coincidence that the only guy who shows it all ends up dead?!)

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