The Playboy Club

A competently made soap with some good actors and nicely staged musical numbers.

The Playboy Club is fun fare. The show could really take off if it chooses to not only be fun, but also explore the various frontiers the 1960s backdrop provides.

The series does have energy and narrative drive, some fun performances, and a glossy '60s eye-candy sheen. That may be enough to hold your attention while Playboy works on some of its problems.

The Playboy Club isn't in the same league, or even the same galaxy, as the critically adored "Mad Men." While the latter offers nuance and depth and keen insights into its era, the former settles for stock characters, cliches and superficiality, punctuated by a lot of come-hither looks.

Some might say the show is overstuffed with stories, but I had no problem following the various strands, even if some were less interesting than others.

The bottom line is this isn't a show you tune into for sophisticated narrative, innovative plot twists and complex characters. It's a sexy, soapy period drama that's as fluffy as the tails on its buxom stars' backsides.

As a kind of CSI: Sleaze City, the show is quite watchable.

NBC, together with Academy Award-winning producer Brian Grazer ("A Beautiful Mind"), tries to duplicate the success of AMC's "Mad Men" but cribs the wrong details with a woefully untalented cast, mixed feminist messages and a melodrama that is at times laugh-out-loud funny.

If the show can rein in some of its more outrageous plot tendencies and focus on music and social issues, it could grow into a Club viewers will want to frequent.

What we get is an unwieldy and mostly humdrum combination of mob tale and backstage musical.

Taylor does a strong job of showcasing the show's main set, a recreation of the original Club, and several of the musical numbers (sometimes the Bunnies get to sing, and other times the show casts actors to play '60s musicians like Ike & Tina Turner) really pop. But the show's attempts at social relevance ring hollow, and the main plot leans too heavily on the wooden Cibrian.

The acting isn't great, some of the hundreds of subplots aren't bad, but this ain't "Mad Men" and Cibrian and Heard are no Jon Hamm and January Jones despite their desperate attempt to be.

Subtract its clunky dialogue, ludicrous plot devices and empowerment nonsense, and you're left with its heightened sense of pulchritude.

The Playboy Club plods forward with no ballast, hoping that the vibrant early '60s music and the miles of bunny cleavage will compensate for the lack of original plotting and characters.

Given the emphasis on soapy doings and shiny exteriors, the serial threatens to short-change its most interesting attributes, glancingly commenting on issues pertaining to sociology and the sexual revolution (such as a Bunny marveling, "I make more money than my father") while lacking the latitude to truly probe them.

An ambitious but ultimately weak attempt to set an ensemble drama inside Hugh Hefner's hallowed, smoke-filled nightclub of early 1960s Chicago.

The whole thing quickly becomes hokey and a grind. Blame goes consistently to the writing.

An insipid and unconvincing attempt to position bunnies at the forefront of a social and sexual revolution.

The sobering truth is that sometimes when you mix too many colors, you don't get a brighter rainbow. You get dark gray. Or, in this case, a supersize soap opera.

I said that The Playboy Club might be promising. Guess what? I lied.

They want to be both fun and edifying and end up being neither, and style-wise, they feel too much like Wikipedia entries with actors. The series might have managed to overcome these problems (partly, at least) if it had a a strong point-of-view, however conflicted, toward what it's showing us. But it doesn't.

The Playboy Club is nothing but a tarted-up mob drama; the bunnies may be used as the marketing and milieu but the main narrative is about the men, and no one seems aware of the irony.

While options during the era were surely limited, the show's broad strokes don't do justice to the choices women were making, or their self-awareness while making them.

Playboy Club makes the mistake of aping Mad Men's Stern social seriousness. [26 Sep 2011, p.54]

Unless the writing of the show improves exponentially, it may not be around long enough for us to remember the characters' first names, much less learn their last.

For viewers looking for a solid hour long drama, it is one more thing not to watch.