`Trade Winds' Miniseries: Shakespeare It Ain't

Two feuding families are torn even further apart when the beautiful daughter of one and the handsome son of the other fall in love. Tragedy ensues. . .

Sound familiar? Like maybe "Romeo and Juliet"? (Half credit if you answered "West Side Story.")

Nope, it's "Trade Winds," a six-hour NBC miniseries making its debut with a two-hour episode at 9 p.m. tomorrow. Four one-hour episodes will air the next four Fridays under the "Great Escapes" banner.

"Trade Winds," set and filmed on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, is the story of the rum-making Philips family and the hotel-keeping Sommers family, rivals for control of the island. The feud flares up when studly young Ocean Sommers (that's his name, folks) falls in love with lovely young Maxine Philips. Maxine is already engaged to Joseph Gabetti, the son ("by a bad first marriage") of witchy Laetitia Philips, wife of Maxine's Uncle Robert.

Maxine's brother Kyle violently opposes her new romance. Her brother Chris, however, stands up for Ocean, his best friend and diving partner, with whom he's hunting the sunken treasure.

Meanwhile, Laetitia's son Anthony has fallen deeply in debt to a casino, while she is eyeing an affair with hotel owner Rick Sommers, Ocean's dad. Rick, however, wants to reunite with his ex-wife, Grace, and get her to help him keep the hotel from going under.

Are you following all this? If so, you may be getting the idea that, similar plot or not (and even though it actually has a balcony scene), "Trade Winds" is not Shakespeare. In fact, it makes "Falcon Crest" seem like "Henry V."

The writing is straight out of the school of old-time melodrama. And the stars, even those we know can act (like Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as patriarch Cristof von Philips, John Beck of "Dallas" as Robert Philips and Barbara Stock of "Spenser: For Hire" as Grace Sommers), are remarkably stiff.

Maybe they're trying not to laugh when delivering such lines as "Heed my warning," "He must pay!" and "You'll never have her!"