Just for fun (and to get it out of my system
) here is another idea... (oh noooooo!)
CollinwoodIn a small town in Maine is a large estate, the domain of the wealthy Collins family. The central mansion is a gutted ruin, the result of a fire nearly fifty years ago. The family itself lives mostly in the original Collinwood mansion, sometimes called the Old House. But the Old House is getting a little crowded, so family patriarch
Quentin Collins (David Selby) and his wife
Maggie (KLS) have decided to move to Cliff House, which is near the estate (also known as the House By The Sea). It once belonged to civil war veteran
Theodore Collins, who lived there as a recluse until his death in 1879. Boarded up for years, Quentin and Maggie have made its restoration something of a project.
This also serves to get them away from some arguments among their children.
Daniel Collins (Kyle MacLachlan) is the current head of the family business, a no-nonsense type who tends to insist upon his own way. Like his father, he is a widower, having married a glamorous young woman who died in a car accident. So Daniel has raised his daughter
Esther Collins (Kristen Bell) alone, and she has a similar, almost icy personality in many ways. Both are, however, extremely protective of their family and friends. Esther is also keeping a secret--she is gay. She and her father disagree about recent efforts to mount an archeological dig into the ruins of the old mansion, which was over 250 years old when it burned and whose cellars are relatively intact. He opposes the idea, while she quietly approves and is curious about her family history.
Dr. Amy Collins Woodard (Carl Gugino) has grown up to be a teacher of history at the local college, married to a
Sheriff Andrew Woodard (Taye Diggs). They have no children and are somewhat estranged from Daniel, not least because she favors exploring the ruins of the big mansion.
Joseph Collins (Matt Keeslar) is the only son of Quentin and Maggie, named for Maggie's best childhood friend who drowned. An artist who lives in Rose Cottage, he has achieved a little bit of a reputation for rather abstract paintings. He is very much in favor of archeologists looking into the estate. He and Daniel have odd, intense relationship. Each are frustrated yet deeply loyal to the other, affectionate and annoyed. There's also a lingering resentment over an unstated fact of live--Daniel was Quentin's favorite, while Joseph was Maggie's.
The archeologist who wants to explore the ruins is one
Dr. Ellis Lang (Bradley Whitford), by all accounts an eccentric but brilliant figure. His assistant--and distant cousin to the elder two Collins siblings via their mother--is
Amber Stokes (Nina Siemaszko), who shows a (to some) surprising and (to some) disturbing interest in the paranormal.
As work proceeds, several odd discoveries are made. One is a dead body, found in a trunk in a sub-basement, dating from the 1860s. It would seem to be that of
Ariel Beaumont, who vanished in 1863. She had been the fiancee of Theodore Collins and he never got over her. She was evidently strangled, which leads Amber Stokes in particular to wonder by whom? Esther Collins seems fascinated and repulsed by the discovery, and comes to believe she may be a reincarnation of someone from that time (she is correct--in a past life she was Theodore Collins).
Maggie and Quentin, meanwhile, discover that Theodore had been experimenting with cross-breeding different plants and a few bulbs--remarkably--survive. But are extremely poisonous. Indeed, exposure to one of them begins to have an impact on Amy--she smells of lilacs, even her breath, but insects that bite her die. Soon her pet becomes ill. It is as if she is turning into a creature of poison (shades of
Rapucinni's Daughter).
Just a little bit of exercise of the imagination. Comments appreciated.