The worst show in the history of television? Ouch! From the New York Times....
October 18, 2007
Television Review | 'Viva Laughlin '
Singing in the Casino? That’s a Gamble
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
“Viva Laughlin” on CBS may well be the worst new show of the season, but is it the worst show in the history of television?
It certainly comes close in a category that includes “Beverly Hills Buntz” in 1987 (Dennis Franz in a short-lived spinoff of “Hill Street Blues”), the self-explanatory “Manimal” in 1983 or last year’s one-episode wonder, “Emily’s Reasons Why Not.” “Viva Laughlin” is not even in the same league as “Cop Rock,” a 1990 experimental series created by Steven Bochco that leavened a gritty police drama with Broadway musical moments: cops and criminals breaking into song and dance. “Viva Laughlin” also features musical outbursts and is far worse.
“Cop Rock,” which featured original music, was ridiculed at the time but deserved credit for daring and originality, even though it was inspired by British series like “Pennies From Heaven” and “The Singing Detective.”
“Viva Laughlin” is far more derivative, a blander American adaptation of a hit British series. The BBC’s “Viva Blackpool” found sardonic humor in its setting — Las Vegas-style casino gambling in a seedy British seaside resort town — almost the kind of cultural disconnect that enlivened “Breaking Away,” a 1979 movie about teenagers in Bloomington, Ind., who become obsessed with Italian bicycle racing. “Viva Laughlin” moves the gambling back to sun-baked Laughlin, Nev., and deflates the joke. The writing is too flat to allow the characters to take form.
The series revolves around Ripley Holden (Lloyd Owen), an extroverted self-made entrepreneur intent on creating his own casino, despite the misgivings of his wife, Natalie (Mädchen Amick), and their two teenage children. When Ripley proudly tours the casino’s unfinished site, he sings and struts to Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas.”
Ripley’s nemesis, Nicky Fontana, is played by Hugh Jackman, who is also an executive producer, and his signature song is the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” which Mr. Jackman lip-syncs, even though he is a successful Broadway singer and dancer. Actually it’s not quite lip-synching: the actors sing, softly, along with the original performer, a little like commuters mumbling along with oldie hits on the car radio.
Melanie Griffith plays Bunny, a former flame of Ripley’s who is married to one of his investors but still has a thing for him, which she expresses by wearing a pink and black lace lingerie while singing the Blondie song “One Way or Another.” (“One way or another, I’m gonna find ya/I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya. ”)
When Bunny’s husband is killed, everyone, including Ripley, is a likely suspect.
A musical murder mystery is not an inherently bad idea. It worked brilliantly for the BBC’s “Singing Detective” some 20 years ago, and music has become only more integrated into television and pop culture since then. The iPod has emboldened people of all ages to work, eat and exercise to their own private soundtracks. “American Idol” has turned television into one huge variety show, while series like “The OC” and “Grey’s Anatomy” substitute long stretches of pop music for plot and dialogue.
John Turturro recently released the film “Romance & Cigarettes,” which stars James Gandolfini as a philandering blue-collar worker who must choose between his wife (Susan Sarandon) and his mistress (Kate Winslet). Those characters also express themselves through golden oldies; Mr. Gandolfini resorts to Engelbert Humperdinck’s “A Man Without Love.”
There has never been a better time for offbeat manipulations of music on television dramas, yet “Viva Laughlin” isn’t even a near miss.
