If the publicity is to be believed, Cane (8.30pm, Wednesdays on Ten) is a ‘Super Soap’. A high-concept, high-gloss, Jimmy-Smits-featuring weekly mega-event, to to be spoken of in the same breath as such legendary prime time soap operas as Dallas, Melrose Place, and Desperate Housewives.

It’s a bit early to tell if Cane deserves to be in that company. Certainly the first ep trotted out most of a super soap’s key ingredients. Number one: family. Nothing else provides the potential for long-running, high-stakes dramatic storytelling like the push and pull of family relationships. Sure, it’s possible to make a successful super soap without a family at its core, but eventually, like Melrose Place, you’ll have to start plumbing more and more outrageous story depths to get the stakes you’re after

Cane revolves around the Duques, a Cuban-American clan with three sons (ambitious, hopeless, adopted), a daughter, and a cracking horn section (they do a lot of s-xy latin dancing at Duque parties). One out of one so far.

And that family has to have tensions. Not your ordinary, “she always sits in the front” family tensions, but deep-seated, “I would kill my brother if I had the chance” family tensions. Cane has done this beautifully. Alex Vega is the adopted son of sugar magnate Pancho Duque. Adopted, and favourite. So eldest (blood) son Frank is pi-sed off – he thinks Alex is cheating him out of his birthright. Not to mention that Alex married his own adopted sister Isabel. Why wouldn’t Frank hate him (for at least three seasons)?

It also helps to have some sort of family business, preferably (for exciting story purposes) the sort that bleeds into criminality from time to time. In Dallas, the Ewings had oil – perfect. In The OC, Caleb Nichol dabbled in magazines. Generally not all that criminal, but certainly s-xy, and in super soaps that’s just as good, often better.

The Duque sugar business sounds dull until you find out that they have parlayed their Florida sugar crop into a brand of rum that rivals Bacardi. Booze – now that is fertile ground for the super soap. I wager 3-5 weeks until a main character, probably a woman, probably Jimmy Smits’ wife, is outed as a closet alcoholic.

And, of course, a super soap needs a super villain. The Samuels are the Duques’ mortal enemies. They own the sugar plantation next door and there is some suggestion that they got it by cheating the Duques in an unnecessarily complicated flashback sequence involving kidnap and possibly murder. Ellis is the magnificently conniving Samuels’ daughter. She’s banging Frank Duque (not for love, obviously, but treachery) and is played by the modern day goddess of villainy, Polly Walker, who was utterly magnificent as Attia in the BBC/HBO swords and sandals super soap, Rome.

So Cane is looking good so far. It seems to have all the fuel it needs to power high-stakes super soap for some time. But the fuel alone is not enough. Super soap might be more expensive, more glamorous, and more exciting than regular five-nights-a-week soap, but when it comes down to it, they are both judged on the quality of their stories. And if Cane can’t keep its yarns revving into the red every week, then all the Jimmy Smits in the world won’t be enough to keep the punters watching.