The Get Down

This series is still sprawling. Three episodes are not enough to know where it's going or where it will end up. The second and third episodes don't completely wriggle free of some of Luhrmann's whimsy. But all told, there's a better balance between what the famed director apparently wanted to do with tone and hewing more accurately to the times.

The Get Down is Netflix’s attempt to ignite romantic nostalgia for another exciting period in musical history, but it’s all hustle and no flow.

The pilot (the one episode directed by Luhrmann) is truly terrible. It’s baggy and self-indulgent, alternately confusing and obvious. The next three episodes aren’t great, either, though they have flashes of interest. ... Then, suddenly, there’s a legitimately fun eureka sequence in Episode 5, as Ezekiel and his young crew invent a new art form. In Episode 6, we get, finally, what feels like a fully original series.

In general, the more The Get Down trusts in its actors to carry the meaning of a moment or scene, the better it is.

After the premiere the tone and style shift significantly. The storytelling takes on more of the quality of a midlevel sitcom, or the ’70s and ’80s films of Michael Schultz (“Car Wash,” “The Last Dragon”), and the big moments become increasingly maudlin. For worse and for better, The Get Down probably should have just been a Baz Luhrmann film.

For now, The Get Down is an exercise in glorious imperfection; it’s got the beat, but it’s still grasping for the tone.

The Get Down exudes the filmmaker’s operatic, lovingly campy spirit, and in small doses there’s a sugary rush to his ecstatic sequences of crowded dance floors, fervent gospel choirs and kids hanging out on the roof of their apartment complex, dreaming of a bigger world. But it’s what’s in-between those standalone moments where The Get Down gets bogged down, the drab storytelling lacking the punch of the show’s period-rich production design and outfits.

It offers some of the more transcendent moments in recent TV memory, but to reach them viewers must slog through some of the dullest.

[The Get Down] has its excellent musical moments and winning performances from a young cast of newcomers but too often it’s an indulgent, rambling bore, particularly in its overlong, almost 90-minute pilot.