Vinyl

A spin of Vinyl‘s first five episodes reveals a beautifully made, sophisticated-enough antihero drama in the Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire mold, but one hampered by incongruities that keep it from being a true game changer.

It would be nice to report that Vinyl sustains the momentum Mr. Scorsese establishes in the pilot, but through five episodes, it tends to bog down.... But the show quickly begins giving less time to the music and more to duller, formulaic plot lines including a marital crisis, a murder investigation and a female secretary’s attempts to break the hemp ceiling of the recording business. You might want to keep “Vinyl” spinning, though, if only for Bobby Cannavale’s smart, sardonic portrayal of Richie Finestra.

Vinyl is made in the spirit of a great party, rather than a great TV show.... Not so dissimilarly from Boardwalk Empire, it has prestige everything--sets, talent, camera work, visuals--but an ersatz essence. The Scorsese hallmarks are thick as the rails.

There’s so much [music] here, Vinyl runs the risk of turning into “Treme,” which seemed to be a music show with a touch of plot. Vinyl spins back years with copious flashbacks, and they do Cannavale and the show no favors. No matter the year, no matter how his hair is parted, he looks the same, a middle-aged guy. Some things can’t be finessed.

Given the technical excellence of the production, your reaction will vary on your liking for the kind of people the filmmakers have chosen to focus on.... Nevertheless, after watching something like half the season, they strike me as unbearably tiresome and uninteresting.

Vinyl drags in its occasionally predictable, too infrequently surprising premiere and invites viewers down a rough road. It feels authentic; it looks and sounds believable. But the situations and characters in Vinyl are overly familiar in this post-antihero, peak TV era.

Scorsese and Winter and a whole host of talented episode writers and directors including Jonathan Tropper (Banshee), S. J. Clarkson, Debora Cahn, and Adam Rapp labor mightily to bend you to the will of Richie Finestra--to see and hear the music the way he does, as full of endless innovation and possibility--but too often, Vinyl traps you in a familiar cycle of sex and drugs and rock & roll.

The show is as expertly shot and acted as its pedigree would suggest, with each episode serving up a few scenes of frightening tension. But the overarching plot of a man trying to rediscover purity in a corrupt world is not a complication of the already over-documented milieu Vinyl exists in. It is exactly the story rock has told about itself time and again, and not a ton is gained in the retelling here.

Vinyl is a compelling idea in search of a compelling story. There simply isn’t much of one, in fact, and--abhorring the ever-present vacuum--a lot of other elements rush in to fill the void. Scenes are padded, lots of flashbacks are even more flaccid, while actors devour the helpless scenery.

To be sure, there are some fine performances, notably by Olivia Wilde as Richie’s former Warhol girl wife; Juno Temple as an ambitious gofer who wants to work her way up; and Ray Romano as Richie’s beleaguered right-hand man. But they’re mostly drowned in the confusion as the show veers from drama to farce to mostly poor musical interludes.

The show improves slightly after the jankily paced pilot, but it never sheds its air of leaden nostalgia.

Not only does the music get lost in the mix, but despite Cannavale’s excellent performance as Richie, there’s almost nothing to invest in with that character, whom we’re introduced to at literally the least interesting point in his life.