Vinyl

Mr. Cannavale’s performance reaches the heights of magnificence. There’s much more that’s stellar both in the cast--Olivia Wilde is outstanding as Devon, Richie’s hopelessly loving wife--and in the writing.... For its creators and its fine cast, this exuberant, hard-eyed and altogether wonderful evocation of an era gone by seems also to have worked out as planned.

Big, noisy and crazy brilliant HBO series.... The performances are masterful on every level, beginning with Cannavale’s Richie Finestra, who is only occasionally capable of keeping his inner turmoil of rage, ambition and fear of failure from exploding to the surface. With his performance, Cannavale vaults to the top of the list of Emmy candidates.

The pilot for the musical drama Vinyl is one of Martin Scorsese’s best films, an explosion of amplifier feedback, nose candy, wide-lapeled shirts, and borderline chaos; the next four episodes are almost as good, and on the basis of the first half-season, it already feels like the first new must-see series of 2016.

If the point is to spare no expense in attempting to make a flawless, fascinating premium cable narrative about a set of people--mostly men with enormous egos--who have extreme and often criminal problems in a glamorous period setting, then this is precisely what HBO has accomplished--again.... Through characters like Devon, Jamie and Lester, Vinyl has very thoughtfully dotted its i’s and crossed its t’s in terms of diversity, but testosterone is still clearly HBO’s most addictive (and preferred) substance.

This is a gritty, bloody knuckled rock ‘n' roll fairy tale as told by the best in the business. There’s little chance that Vinyl will either burn out or fade away.

What follows is a sometimes humorous, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes bumpy ride through the era, with a story that often seems to halt just when it’s picking up momentum. Still, every time the story falters, the characters’ and the show’s obvious love for popular music in all its forms lifts it back up.

Vinyl, after all, is at its best--and most interesting--when it sticks to the music industry with its oddball characters, egos and hedonistic ways.

Vinyl may hit one or two questionable notes in its first five episodes, but fueled by a beautifully realized sense of place and Cannavale’s certain-to-be-Emmy-nominated performance, it’s definitely worth a spin.

Vinyl throws audiences an unexpected twist late in the pilot. This late hard left changes this series from a story about a failing business and turns it into something more significant.

Boardwalk Empire took a more layered view of the Prohibition ’20s, whereas Vinyl’s main takeaway is that everything used to be cooler, sexier, and more fun. That message will resonate for some, and strike others as a sermon about the redemptive power of rock delivered directly to the choir.

It’s all very, very ambitious, with hits that keep on coming while storyline misses seem to be almost beside the point. Vinyl is thoroughly rousing at its core, a crazed, dope-filled, sometimes dopey trip that begins in 1973 and has nothing in common with the earlier, comparatively sedate decade brought to you by AMC’s Mad Men.

At times there seems to be too much going on in the pilot, between Richie running away from gun-wielding lunatics, attempting to sign new talent, working to keep his existing roster, finagling a deal to sell his company and balancing his precarious home life. But it’s no greater a flaw than most pilots attempting to set up the scheme of things face, and the action never seems bogged down or tied up in specifics.

The thrill of rock 'n' roll as it took a turn toward modern punk, discovered disco and made way for hip-hop in 1970s Manhattan is captured in a fresh way in Vinyl, a tough-minded series.

It’s all pure formula, down to the spiraling hero, glitzy job, Big Secret central plot device, and angry spouse, but it’s a formula that feels finer tuned than most.

The best parts of the occasionally overwrought Vinyl depict the whirlwind of hustling required to keep American Century solvent and relevant, with funky, sometimes funny subplots. [15-28 Feb 2016, p.16]

Vinyl works best when it laser-focuses on the nature of the very particular communal passions that fuel the industry, often revealed through Richie, Zak and Skip's characters.... Where the series does sometimes get a little sluggish is in the non-music-focused stories.

Head of promotions/payola master Zak Yankovich (Ray Romano), giftedly shady head of sales Skip Fontaine (J.C. MacKenzie), and ill-fated artist Lester Grimes (Ato Essandoh) are among the engaging characters who could ensure that Vinyl lives as much more than a destination for leisure suits, coke noses, and Foghat.

Through five episodes, there's an awful lot of excess in Vinyl, which perhaps makes sense for a show involving two icons of '70s rock in Jagger and Scorsese. But all of Richie's searching for the next idea, and all of the scenes involving the Nasty Bits or other rising forms of music, suggest a show that really wishes it could strip away all the glam and all the tropes and just do something simple and raw and powerful.

Vinyl will leave you dancing to the music, but may leave you wondering why you should care.

Vinyl feels like it's still doing its mic checks, but somewhere along the way, it just might burst out into a blistering solo. And it's worth paying attention until it does.

Vinyl, the greatly anticipated HBO series about the record industry in 1970s New York, is ambitious, riveting, brilliant, addictive, kaleidoscopic, gonzo, cartoonish, kitschy, obvious, indulgent, awkward, and bloated.

After five episodes, Vinyl sometimes feels like it’s still just warming up for the songs that will bring the house down, but I’m not leaving this show any time soon.

It’s plenty interesting stuff, including the various creative forces at play in the era, as well as its seamier aspects. Yet even with the benefit of a two-hour launch, the premiere unfolds in a manner that can feel as scattered and undisciplined as the headlining acts--not just in its bouncing chronology, but the extended, dreamlike sequences that seek to convey.