Sun, surf, sand and a boatload of secrets make waves on Global Thursday with the long-awaited premiere of made-in-Manitoba teen soap Falcon Beach.

The opening episode, on Ch. 12 at 7 p.m., picks up where last year's movie pilot left off. After a wildly eventful May long weekend, during which a local kid got high on ecstasy and took a near-fatal plunge off the water tower, the pretty boys and girls of summer settle in for a season of romantic entanglements, heartbreak and life-or-death drama.

Local actress Melissa Elias has her share of all three -- as 19-year-old lifeguard and hip-hop aerobics instructor Erin Haddad, she's hooked up with boy-next-door Danny (Ephraim Ellis), but there are clouds on the horizon when she's caught up in a mid-season tragedy on the beach.

"When I came back this season Beth (writer Elizabeth Stewart) said, 'We're going to throw a lot of stuff at you, I hope you're ready for it,' " Elias recalls. "It was just really intense for me ... there will be some tearjerker stuff."

But Elias enjoyed some personal support on the set for a couple of days. Her sister T'Shura, a lawyer who has studied ballet, played an extra during an aerobics dance scene and her brother Robbie hit the beach during shooting on a wakeboard competition.

"He came out on a different day and hit on all the girls that were on set -- he had a great time."

Now based in Vancouver, Elias says the tight shooting schedule on Falcon Beach made it seem like boot camp for actors, but she feels blessed to have had the experience -- and an on-set acting coach for some of her more demanding scenes.

The 13-episode series from Winnipeg's Original Pictures and Toronto's Insight Productions had to run like a military campaign from late June to late September, shooting most exteriors only weekdays at Winnipeg Beach -- local producer Kim Todd wanted to minimize disruptions for the town's cottage crowd -- with interior scenes playing out at an Inkster Park studio.

It's challenging enough to shoot a one-hour drama. With this show, there are weather concerns -- the two-hour pilot shot during the cold, wet summer of '04 and flooding on Lake Winnipeg was a worry last fall -- along with a huge cast of actors and extras to ride herd over.

Allison Hossack, who grew up in Killarney, plays wealthy cottager Ginny Bradshaw, who reunites with her first love after she brings her kids -- beautiful, business-minded daughter Paige and bad-boy Lane -- to her old family stomping grounds for the summer.

A regular on Another World from 1989-92, she starred in 1996 Fox cult hit Profit and more recently Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital. Hossack lives in Vancouver, so it was fun to reconnect with her own Manitoba roots -- "Except there I was a townie and here I'm a cottager."

At 40, she's a youthful TV mom, but during an on-set interview last summer, Hossack said she's pleased that the adults on the show give the teens a run for their money when it comes to leading dramatic lives. Ginny has more drama than most.

"Her grown children are in trouble, her marriage, she's got a sister who's introduced in the first season and an old flame from her past," Hossack says.

"They've written some very layered and I think indepth storylines for the family."

Ginny's husband is out of the picture for much of the summer, dealing with a corporate crisis in the city, an absence that may make Ginny's heart grow fonder -- toward that old beau.

Meanwhile, son Lane is in trouble with the law after dealing drugs to local kids. He also took time out to romance a recovering drug addict and fashion model named Tanya (Devon Weigel) who fled the high life in Europe to return to the nest -- out of which her trashy stage mother immediately gave her a hard shove. Tanya soon ran back to ex-boyfriend and wakeboard jock Jason Tanner (Steve Byers), a development that steered Jason's budding romance with Paige Bradshaw on the rocks.

In the opener, Paige consoles herself by butting into Erin's boyfriend's business. Danny runs his dad's arcade, which is in financial trouble and, in a storyline inspired by the hundreds of retro concert posters that line the walls of the Playland Arcade in Winnipeg Beach, Paige takes it upon herself to find buyers for the vintage posters.

"It's a wonderful place and so much of the inspiration for the script comes from the town," actor Ellis said during a lunch break on set last summer.

The film crew gave several local businesses new facades and fresh coats of paint and, at least on TV, the old dance hall is up for a renovation.

Manitoba's first adult prime-time series, Falcon Beach will also air in the U.S. next summer, on Disney cable network ABC Family.

MEET THE WHOLE FALCON BEACH GANG

THE GIRLS