This is the only Danielle Steele adaptation I've ever watched, and I rather enjoyed it because of Lindsay Wagner. Perhaps because Steele herself has said she never bought Wagner as Billie, I've never been interested in any of the others. Still, I thought this one came to life pretty well.The plot centers on three main characters: Billy (Lindsay Wagner), a plain young woman who is a poor relation of a rich family; Spider Elliot (Barry Bostwick), a roguish photographer; and Valentine O'Neil (Marie-France Pissier), an audacious, but unknown designer. Billy's story is the rise from poor relation of a rich family to wife, and later widow, of powerful and rich businessman, Ellis Ikehorn (Efram Zimbalist, Jr.). After Ellis' death, she opens her own boutique, Scruples, which is how her life intersects with Spider and Valentine. Later she meets up with film director, Vito Orsini (Nick Mancuso), and helps give his career a boost. Spider is a photographer, who has a habit of sleeping with his models. Valentine lives across the hall from him. Sparks fly between them from the first, but it takes the whole movie for them to realize their attraction to each other (plus a little help from Spider's mother, who has to point it out to him). Spider's relationship with up and coming actress Melanie Adams (Kim Catrall) helps her get her first big break, but when she starts getting out of hand, Spider is the only one who can reel her in. In the meantime, Valentine is first pursued by a designer who is using her to hide his homosexuality, something she finds out in a particularly nasty way, and then pursued by corporate lawyer Josh Hillman (Robert Reed), whose passionless pursuit of her eventually fails. Will this trio find happiness while turning Scruples into a commercial success? Typical soap opera fare, where everything is larger than life, and people are surprisingly slow to pick up on the obvious. Particularly hard to swallow is the rapidity with which people claim to be falling in love. I can buy that they would bed each other as quickly as they do, but love usually takes a little more time. But then, the movie wouldn't be much fun if it were more realistic.The acting is okay. Wagner gives her usual committed performance, and makes us like her character. Zimbalist gives a polished performance of a suave and charming man. Bostwick's befuddlement works for the character. Mancuso is also charming in his short screen time. Reed is wooden, and his declarations of love for Valentine just aren't believable. Pissier is annoyingly condescending at times. Graham bristles with malice. Catrall is fabulous as the innocent who quickly learns the ropes. Gene Tierney turns in a nice performance as a lecherous gossip columnist, whose attentions are not turned where you might expect them to be. And Gavin McLeod nicely sheds his good guy image as a nasty studio executive.It's not great movie making. But it is campy fun, and that makes it worth watching.

This is a brilliant programme, OK i'm biased to a degree, Lindsay Wagner is a childhood crush i've never grown out of.OK this may not be documentary film making but it isn't what i'm looking for when i decide to watch this type of show. The story arc is interesting and appeals to that part of us that live in hope of a happy ending.Barry Bostwick shows the early promise that has developed into his career today, Kim Cattrall (Pre "Sex in the City") is spookily convincing as the "FRUITCAKE" actress, and the other supporting characters are to a man better that 80% of todays television output.Watch it give it a fair chance and see what YOU THINK

This movie is truly, truly awful at times - but has flashes of brilliance. On the plus side, Barry Bostwick's performance is, more often than not, fun to watch. There are scenes that are so well written, you'll swear the production team included a competent (and, sadly, part-time) script doctor. You can also laugh heartily at the incredibly earnest way in which the characters continually fall in love at the drop of a hat. On the not-so-good side: The first African-American actor shows up after about an hour and a half, and he's a waiter serving drinks at a party. Ouch. Also, this film has the dubious distinction of containing the worst car chase I have ever seen.When the writing is good, it's pretty good; when it's bad, it's amazingly bad. Scruples is amazingly bad about 90% of the time. The American Dairy Association would save a fortune if it could harness the power of this much cheese.

Oh my goodness!!!! The Bionic Woman was a much more believable role for Lindsay Wagner than this. She plays Billie Winthrop Ikehorn, a character that morphs from a chubby teenager to an elegant woman in her mid- to late-thirties. If it weren't for the fact that she has ENORMOUS legs, she would not have looked like a fat girl, which is the only part of her character that she nails. Barry Bostwick is a dream, as usual, with his tremendous head of hair and some very tight jeans. Marie-France Pisier is probably a jam-up actress in France, but she does not translate well to English. She played the luckless yet conniving Noelle Page in "The Other Side of Midnight." She played both characters identically,with the two emotions she posesses; blank and pissy. The book was much much better than this miniseries. At least with a book, you can use your imagination and put faces on the characters that make sense to you. Nothing about this makes sense. >