Out of all the long-running programs voluntarily going off the air this month, the hardest to replace will be Melrose Place. The Aaron Spelling-produced prime-time soap aired for the first time on July 8, 1992. Spelling took a format that had been popular in the 1980s and, depending on your reference point, hipped it up or younged it down. Rather than following the trials and tribulations of a family a la Dallas and Dynasty, though, Melrose was about a group of twentysomething neighbours living in a Los Angeles apartment building.

"Now that it's over, all I can do is hope that someone will start showing reruns," says Joe Elkhoury, a Melrose fan from Oshawa, Ont. Like other devotees of the over-the-top Fox network drama, Elkhoury doesn't think there's a program out there that can give viewers the same mix of sex and scandal they got every Monday night from Melrose.

In general, it's going to be tough for anybody to find a show that has that kind of impact," says Craig Erwich, Fox's vice-president of current drama programming.

Like a king who dies leaving only bastard sons behind, the show has no clear successor. When Dallas went off the air, it left an offspring in Knot's Landing, born when J.R.'s brother Gary moved to California. After the gang from Cheers said so long, many of those viewers migrated to Frasier along with the bar's resident psychiatrist.

But Stacie Pierce, a Melrose fan in Atlanta, Ga., says the volunteer writers who staff her Melrose tribute Web site, Melrose Space, are distraught.

"There's really nothing that matches the implausibility and the cheese and the silliness. For us, the show is almost like a comedy 'cause it's just so ridiculous," she explains.

The program with perhaps the strongest claim to the throne is Beverly Hills 90210, the show from which Melrose ostensibly spun off seven years ago. But fans of Billy, Amanda and Peter see it as little more than a pretender. "90210 is too grounded, I think, and boring," says Elkhoury. "They don't have really surprising storylines. They just have dating and relationships."

Fox's current Wednesday night offering, Party of Five, is another possible camp for Melrose refugees, although its earnest characters and grim plots count against it. "Party of Five, I don't know, it's kind of depressing," says Elkhoury.

"We've talked about Party of Five and the thing with it is that they tackle some really tough subject material. But they attack it in a much more realistic and serious manner," observes Pierce.

Party of Five also never spawned a phenomenon similar to Melrose Mondays -- evenings when fans would gather at bars or in dorms to watch the show, yell at the TV screen and critique each character's wardrobe. To the dedicated, Melrose wasn't just a TV show; it was also a sporting event.

When Pierce conducted a poll on her Web site asking where Melrose followers should devote their fan energies from now on, the overwhelming choice was Ally McBeal. Fox is hoping that its Monday night replacement for Melrose, the new Party of Five spin-off Time of Your Life, will also look attractive. With Jennifer Love Hewitt as the star, though, it appears to have more in common with Felicity.

Since it's being billed as a young version of Dynasty, Fox's Manchester Prep on Thursdays may absorb some of the Melrose audience. There's also a chance that a current series will mutate to accommodate Melrose viewers.

As Pierce points out, Melrose Place itself didn't develop its trademark campiness until blond vamp Heather Locklear signed on as a regular partway through the first season.

"When it first started, it was a very bubble-gum, pop kind of show. If you ever see the first few episodes, they are all real nice and neat and tidy and their biggest problems are that somebody broke a nail or got a flat tire. Whereas now people are blowing up buildings and killing each other and sleeping with each other's spouse and stuff like that," she says. "Everything would end with a pool party and everybody was so happy and it would make my teeth hurt."