A Harvard professor is lured back into the courtroom after twenty-five years to take the case of a young black man condemned to death for the horrific murder of a child.

Maverick is a gambler who would rather con someone than fight them, and needs an additional three thousand dollars in order to enter a winner-takes-all poker game that begins in a few days, so he joins forces with a woman gambler with a marvellous southern accent, and the two try and enter the game.

Follow the lives of a group of young adults living in a brownstone apartment complex on Melrose Place, in Los Angeles, California.