Ryan's Hope is an American soap opera created by Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer, originally airing for 13 years on ABC from July 7, 1975 to January 13, 1989. It revolved around the trials and tribulations within a large Irish-American family in the Riverside district of New York City.

Phony backwoods preacher Amos T. Huxley stays in a small North Carolina town long enough to fleece his congregation, swindle the profits from a moonshine still, and seduce dumb blonde Mary Lou. Mary Lou's ex-boyfriend becomes suspicious of the preacher and gets the local police to investigate his actions.

The premise is that Kari's artist boyfriend (who'd look like a low-rent Charlie Sheen, if Charlie Sheen himself didn't fit that category) can neither paint nor get it on with his ridiculously good-looking girl - until the day that he throws paint over her. Then they roll around on the canvas in ecstasy and he sells the result for loads of dosh. It's actually very funny, sending up her prim impatience and his tortured-artist schtick with equal-opportunity amusement. There's not exactly a plot, as the film is structured - like the soft-porn movie it basically is - in a series of bonk sessions. But because they're always covered in paint, and tastefully filmed (with Ms. Wuhrer's own breathy songs on the soundtrack), it's quirky and strangely involving. (And very sexy.) Plus, in its own modest way, it brings up all sorts of odd questions about the relationship of art and life and the cost of art to the people around the artist. It also has a very funny and extremely soft-core parody of that increasingly boring staple of hardcore, the Anal Sex Scene. Recommended.