Viva Laughlin Lives No More

Maybe you never knew what happened to Hugh Jackman’s CBS project, “Viva Laughlin,” or maybe you never even heard of such a show. Well, if you were one of the few viewers the show had, you may or may not know by now that it was canceled last week after CBS aired only two episodes. Am I surprised? No, because a musical television series set in a casino doesn’t have a market in the land of contemporary television, even if Hugh Jackman is a driving foce behind it. Some could see this ship headed for disaster no matter who was at the wheel.

Though Jackman had a guest starring role on the show, even if Jackman had appeared naked, it probably wouldn’t have saved it. Even in Jackman’s homeland down under, the Sydney-Morning Herald reported that the show was dumped after just one episode aired in Australia. This goes to show that it’s not just Americans who aren’t in the mood for such a different type of show featuring characters breaking into song, but an audience on the other side of the world with different senses of whimsical and unconventional entertainment apply still rejected this “Moulin Rouge” style show set to the kind of backdrop behind NBC’s “Las Vegas.”

The tastes and mood of television audiences today is just too dark to allow for musical drama and too dry to allow for dramatic musicals. “Scrubs” may be able to get away with a musical episode, but it is a biting comedy that has always indulged surreal sequences, fantasy or otherwise, within its flexible format. Drama is left much less to interpretation, and only the best musicals grab the interest of moviegoers, much less TV viewers, away from Broadway. While the “karaoke” musical (such as “Moulin Rouge” and more significantly “Romance and Cigarettes” starring James Gandolfini, Christopher Walken, Susan Sarandon and Kate Winslet) is earning the attention and respect of audiences and critics, we’re still a long way from being able to pull off a TV series with original story, cast and music as if it’s a common phenomena.

“Viva Laughlin” was the first project of the production company Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness started called Seed. As first productions go, at least “Viva Laughlin” was daring, ambitious and tried to be innovative. The good news is that there’s nowhere for their projects to go now but up.