Star's high-profile television career began by writing the pilot script for Beverly Hills, 90210, a series that paired him with iconic sexagenarian Aaron Spelling. The series, over which Star and Spelling shared creative control, became the FOX network's breakout hit drama. FOX nearly canceled it repeatedly during its first season, but a relaunch during the repeat­ heavy summer time period established the series, its stars, and consequently the network. Star approached the series as a "thirtysomething for teens" and empha­sized teen social issues such as drinking, pregnancy, and rape amidst the series’ melodramatic personal relationships. FOX requested Star for the series pilot because a screenplay he sold at age 24, the story of a teenager who thinks he is an alien (Doin’ Time on Planet Earth, 1988), indicated Star's talent for writing from a teen's point of view.

     Star then moved to Melrose Place, a pseudo-spin­ off from Beverly Hills, 90210, designed as a scheduling match for the series in terms of genre but with a focus on a group of characters a few years older than the Beverly Hills teens. Melrose Place provided further association with Spelling, but Star reportedly balked at the shift to campy, over-the-top play with the soap genre that began with addition of Heather Locklear to the cast, although the adjustments to the series likely account for much of its subsequent success.

     While Star vacationed during the summer of 1994, his agent pitched a new series to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and the network returned with an offer for 13 episodes. CBS's exceptional offer to cover all production costs (rather than just the licensing fee that usually required producers to take a loss in the range of $300,000 to half a million dollars per episode) provided an opportunity Star could not tum down, but his departure from Melrose Place created some animosity with Spelling, who forced him out of a continuing consulting role. The new series returned Star to the East Coast for a serial drama about the personal and professional manipulations of those associated with a glossy New York magazine.

     CBS positioned the new series, Central Park West, as the showpiece in its attempt to shift away from its audience base of older adults. The series sought to re­ create the opulence and character antagonisms of Dallas and Dynasty but did not last long enough to establish characters or story. Despite heavy promotion and reliance on many of the narrative and visual features that had proven successful in Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place, Central Park West failed to find an audience. The network ordered radical retooling and then cancellation. CBS reduced its attempted brand shift after the sale of the network to Westinghouse and the departure of its top programming executive.

     The following summer, Star met with HBO to propose a series inspired by Candace Bushnell's New York Observer sex column. The lack of content restrictions afforded by the subscriber-based cable network al­lowed exceptionally frank examination of the sexual acts and emotional relationships of four single women living in Manhattan. Sex and the City reinvigorated the television comedy form with its film style, direct camera address, and sophisticated stories. Star left the show after its third season, returning to broadcast network series that were potentially more lucrative although also restricted by network control that Star likened to "being in an Eastern bloc country." Sex and the City was a critical and popular success and appeared on HBO for a total of six seasons.

     Star created two series in 2000: Grosse Pointe on The WB and The $treet for FOX. With Grosse Pointe, he parodied his start with the series' show-within-a­ show comedy about the production of a teen soap opera. Built on the premise that the drama behind the scenes of television series trumps what is on air, the series provided a funny and pointed critique of the industry, the melodrama genre, and its stars. Grosse Pointe required last-minute adjustments and garnered publicity after Spelling complained about a character who apparently referenced his daughter Tori, who played a central role in Beverly Hills, 90210. The series had difficulty finding an audience in part because of The WB's lack of an appropriate half-hour series with which to schedule it. The network shifted Grosse Pointe's time slot throughout the season, but the series failed to find an audience and was not renewed.

     The $treet sent Star back to New York for a short­ lived look at the mostly male world of Wall Street and finance. A lavish cost of $2.3 million per episode led to the series' exceptionally distinct promotions for the show and announced the entry of the also short-lived Artists Television Group (ATG) production studio onto the Hollywood production scene. Promotions, however, were all that most viewers saw of The $treet. FOX canceled the program after little more than a month on the air. The series had the misfortune of appearing just as the U.S. economy began sputtering and on the heels of Bull, a similar series with more complexly drawn characters, presented on Turner Network Television (TNT) on cable.

     Explaining the failure of Grosse Pointe and The $treet in an interview with National Public Radio's Terri Gross, Star reflected that none of his series had succeeded in their first season but found  audiences and their distinction in their second year. Despite the lack of opportunity to refine Central Park West, Grosse Pointe, and The $treet, Star had already achieved rapid success in the Hollywood creative community, capitalizing on the culture and style of the second generation of television viewers. In 2003, Star acted as executive producer on a new series for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Miss Match, about a young divorce lawyer who moonlights as a matchmaker.