I am officially intrigued...

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NBC ordered the pilot for a new TV series from Steven Spielberg about putting on a Broadway musical. Also, I would not mind if the Idina Menzel show got picked up. It'd be awesome if there was a musical TV series that was actually, you know... good. :)

Comments

[urania_calliope]

I have a theory that a show accurately depicting the lives of musicians would be too depressing for anyone to watch.

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Ha! Possibly very true.

But this would be a show about putting on a show! And that was always fun when I was in high school... :)

[rogin]

Hm, yeah, a good musical show would be cool. I'm just not really too hot on all those shows about musicians.

My perfect show would be some other genre with musical, I don't know, the singing Supernatural?

Take the wicked books and turn them into a tv show and I'd be the happiest person on earth, but the thing where musical and the personal live of the musicians is the plotwise focus is something I could easily do without.

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I'm just not really too hot on all those shows about musicians.

All WHAT shows, lol? I'm assuming you're including Glee, but that's the only show with any kind of regular musical performance that I can think of.

The problem with a musical TV show is that you have to keep writing original songs. I mean, think of how long it took Joss to write OMWF, and how much more work went into the making of that episode than a typical ep - no show could keep that up for an entire season and have it be any sort of quality. That's why most shows either go the "special musical episode" route or rely on existing songs (like Glee and the spectacularly awful Viva Laughlin) and just shoehorn them into the narrative.

I suspect that's how the Idina Menzel show will go - she can sing existing songs as part of her job, and they don't even have to be related to the plot.

A show about a musical is a very different approach. There's only one set of songs, so there's not going to be a show-stopping number in every episode. It'd be more of a behind-the-scenes story, which appeals to me because I love theater and used to be involved in it, but ultimately it's the same as any other behind-the-scenes show - it succeeds or fails based on the characters, whether or not we like them and care about them. The "Broadway theater" premise is just the job they do, the context in which they interact. It's why Sports Night was brilliant and Studio 60 flopped. Same premise, very different execution.

Take the wicked books and turn them into a tv show and I'd be the happiest person on earth

I'm... not sure how that would work, since there's already a Wicked musical. What would they do, recycle the music and expand the story so it's more than 2 hours? Or write different songs that kind of overlap the same story?

[(Anonymous)]

I get your point about it being virtually impossible to write new music for every episode and actually I don't really mind covers but in my dream musical show they would be somehow incorporated in the plot, the way vidders do it. Instead of the plot being about singing.

I'm... not sure how that would work, since there's already a Wicked musical. What would they do, recycle the music and expand the story so it's more than 2 hours? Or write different songs that kind of overlap the same story?

Wicked came to mind because there are two more books in the series, only the first one was turned into a musical. But there really are a lot of stories I'd love to see told as musicals.

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in my dream musical show they would be somehow incorporated in the plot

Oh, yeah, definitely. In my world, people randomly burst into song. :)