In the US: Sundays, 8/7c, ABC in the UK: Not yet acquired
Once upon a time, not so long ago, a clever man had the idea to make a TV show in which fairy tales were true and still happening in the real world. He made that TV show and it was called Grimm and it’ll be on later this week.
Yes, coincidentally, in the same ‘strange’ way as NBC and ABC both simultaneously deciding to do shows set in the 60s à la Mad Men (The Playboy Club and Pan Am) and CBS and ABC both simultaneously deciding to do shows about the plight of modern men (How to be a Gentleman and Last Man Standing/Man Up!/Work It), ABC has also decided to make a show in which fairy tales are true and still happening in the real world and it’s called Once Upon A Time.
How did that happen? Magic, presumably, and definitely not just networks copying each others’ ideas.
Anyway, in Once Upon A Time, Jennifer Morrison (Cameron in House) is a bondswoman. Yes, that’s plausible, isn’t it? She’s a single bondswoman who can’t get a date and has no friends. Getting more plausible by the minute, isn’t it?
But get this – it turns out that 10 years ago, she gave up a child for adoption.
Uh huh.
He finds her on the Internet and asks her to come home with him to save the town where he lives – Storybrooke. Everyone there is really a character from a fairy tale but doesn’t know it, thanks to the curse of Snow White’s wicked step-mother: the town mayor and the woman who adopted him.
But get this – again. Morrison is really the long-lost daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, disappeared in a magic wardrobe, but foretold to return on her 28th birthday to save everyone from the wicked step-mother’s spell.
So does this review have a happy ending? Let’s find out after the trailer.
There’s a lot of talk about people harking back to the ‘easier’ times of the 60s, to wanting to once again enjoy a time when sexism, racism and homophobia were acceptable. When women know their ‘place’ and that was too look pretty and not do much.
That, apparently, is the appeal of Mad Men. And why there are now two other shows set in the 60s, vying for our attentions: The Playboy Club and now ABC’s Pan Am.
Of course, this is cobblers. Mad Men is successful because it allows us to look back and condemn those times and because it actually has good writing, good acting and good characterisation. And while Mad Men has certainly helped to get these two shows on our screens, American TV has been making ‘period pieces’ like this for years, whether it’s Swingtown, Band of Brothers, John Adams, Life on Mars or Bonanza.
Like Mad Men, these new 60s shows also allow us to look back at the 60s and condemn, yet while The Playboy Club has decided to tread the dark path of the crime drama while showing us a certain amount of the sleaze at the Chicago Playboy Club and what women’s lives were like at the time, Pan Am has gone light and fluffy when doing the same, trying to show us a world in which the air hostess was the height of glamour and empowerment and a job to which apparently any intelligent woman would aspire, whether it was to get away from her own life or because she’s a secret CIA agent.
Yet, despite all the things that Pan Am could and should have ripped off from Mad Men, even with the help of West Wing producer Thomas Schlamme and a cast that include Christina Ricci, it’s gone for possibly the worst option: it’s picked up on Mad Men‘s pacing. Pan Am is about as exciting as an eight-hour flight across the Atlantic.
The Office gets some new employees – you might recognise them from some other shows including Mad Men, Breaking Bad, 30 Rock, Castle, Game of Thrones, Parks and Recreation, Law & Order: SVU, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.
Playboy. Say the word and there’s going to be an immediate reaction. Some people will be excited at the hint of some flesh, some people will think it anti-female and some people will instantly think ‘porn’ and try to ban whatever you’re talking about.
So it is with NBC’s The Playboy Club – formerly known as just Playboy – which had the Parents Television Council boycotting it before they’d even seen it, which had NBC’s Utah affiliate saying they weren’t going to show it because of its associations with pornography and which had various people saying it should be boycotted because it was demeaning to women.
The producers and stars protested that this was a historical drama/crime story/soap and that everyone was making something out of nothing before they’d even seen it. Okay, the nudity clause in the stars’ contracts didn’t help, but this was NBC so the chances of actual nudity, given the Janet Jackson ‘Superbowl nip slip’ is still being dragged through the courts, was zero, but that didn’t seem to stop anyone.
Anyway, now it’s on our screens so everyone can see what the fuss is about – or at least 5m people can, given the show’s lackluster ratings on Monday.
Set in Chicago, 1961, it stars Amber Heard – best known in the US as “that girl in the new Guess jeans ads” and in the UK as “Top Gear‘s best ever but slowest ‘star in a reasonably priced car'” (and on this ‘ere blog as one of our regular ‘random actors‘) – as Maureen, a new ‘bunny’ in Chicago’s Playboy Club. She gets herself into hot water when she’s attacked by a patron who turns out to be a mob boss. Naturally, she kills him with her stiletto.
Aided by Nick Dalton – played by Eddie Cibrian, best known in the UK as “that guy who took over from Adam Rodriguez for a season in CSI: Miami when he had a hissy fit” and in the US as “that scum who ditched his model wife and baby so that he could have an affair with the equally married Leann Rimes” – Maureen manages to cover up her crime.
For now.
With a scattergun approach that involves firing just about everything possible at the screen, ranging from social issues and soap opera love triangles to singing, dancing and a little bit of ultra-violence, the show has a little something for everyone. Given all those ingredients, it’s a little duller than you might hope, as well as a little stupider, but it at least shows some promise.
