Cameron Crowe’s ‘Roadies’ debuts on Showtime
Written, created and directed by Cameron Crowe, the new series “Roadies” (10 p.m. Sunday, Showtime, TV-MA) is the latest to extoll rock music as a deeply profound, significant and even spiritual entity.
It’s not as filled with ridiculous speeches as the recently canceled HBO embarrassment “Vinyl” or FX’s weary Denis Leary vehicle “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll,” returning for a second season June 30. But conversations about music and its purity of essence do dominate the proceedings.
Luke Wilson stars as Bill, the recently sober tour manager seen in the first scene enjoying intercourse with a woman less than half his age. As in many baby-boomer fantasies (not to mention Viagra ads), she is profoundly moved and impressed by the experience.
Bill runs the backstage preparations for arena-rock phenomenon The Staton-House Band along with Shelli (Carla Gugino). A professional tandem of long standing, they’re frequently mistaken for a married couple. They seem locked in a mind meld and finish each other’s sentences. This leads to a lot of “cute” rapid-fire dialogue that can make “Roadies” more like a slightly decaffeinated take on an Aaron Sorkin comedy. To be fair, it has a much lighter touch than “The Newsroom” and other recent Sorkin misfires.
Imogen Poots stars as Kelly Ann, another Sorkinesque touch, a smart young woman determined to leave the roadie life and follow her own dream of attending film school in New York. But you know she never will because, gosh, “the music” is too darned important! You knew this the first moment you saw her, chatting reverently with the band’s Dylan-quoting bus driver.
The camera seems to be in love with Kelly Ann’s eyes and the show is infatuated with her passionate intensity for an older generation’s pop cultural obsessions.
For the record, Poots (“28 Weeks Later”) was born in 1989. That’s a full five years after the 1984 mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” demonstrated that the smartest approach to rock’s culture of self-important bombast was satire and farce.
DULL DANCE
A week after turning “Mother May I Sleep with Danger?” into a vampire movie, Lifetime offers something classy. Too often that means something a tad dull. And that’s the case with “Center Stage: On Pointe” (8 p.m. tonight).
Peter Gallagher stars as Jonathan Reeves, the embattled director of the American Ballet Academy. He’s been told that his dedication to classical ballet has taken the company to the brink of financial ruin. He’s got to try to shake things up. That means running a dance camp where they welcome modern dancers into their elite ranks.
Enter Nicole Munoz as Bella Parker, a spunky striver who has lived in the shadow of her ballerina sister and who spends the dance camp evading the passive-aggressive sabotage of snootier competitors.
This sequel to 2000’s “Center Stage” is curiously listless for all of the movement on screen. Viewers would be better served by catching up with this summer’s “So You Think You Can Dance” competition.
TONIGHT’S HIGHLIGHTS
Regional coverage of Major League Baseball (7 p.m., Fox).
The U.S. Olympics Trials (NBC) features women’s diving (8 p.m.) and men’s gymnastics (9 p.m.).
A distraught husband holds a maternity ward hostage on “20/20: In An Instant” (9 p.m., ABC).
Jamie creates a diversion on “Outlander” (9 p.m., Starz, TV-MA).
An explosive invention on “Hell on Wheels” (9 p.m., AMC, TV-14). “48 Hours” (8 p.m., CBS). Celebrities galore on “People’s List” (8 p.m., ABC).
Premier Boxing Champions (9 p.m., CBS), live from Brooklyn.
Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin.tvguy@gmail.com.