TV’s second-best show
Best show on TV? Easy. The Good Wife. But now that Broadchurch has finished, the second-best show (at least on a non-subscription channel) is most definitely Nashville, a series from ABC in the States that More4 screens at 10pm on Thursdays (right after TGW). It’s the story of the life and loves of a traditional country singer Rayna James (Connie Britton) and her rivalry with the younger, Pop-ier, much bitchier Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere). There are lots of other characters and plotlines too, and it’s set in the home of country music and on the road. It was created and is run by Callie Khouri, who wrote the great Thelma & Louise (1991), and it’s soap-y and sexy and super-enjoyable, in part because it has great songs. So it’s a modern musical. Glee for grown-ups. This is one of the best duets, with Rayna and Deacon Claybourne (Charles Esten), the man she walked away from years ago to marry the father of one (but not both) of her adorable daughters.
If you too like Nashville, you’ll love the two-part Nashville Roundtable, hosted by Anne Helen Petersen who writes the great celebrity gossip, academic style blog. Part one is here, and the second part has just been posted. These two pieces are a wonderful mix of fan-talk and analysis, some of it spoken in a demotic that’s as complex and as referential as critical theory. But remember that we’re maybe six episodes or so behind the States, so there are things in part two that we don’t know yet. Anyway, here’s another song from the series, maybe the musical highlight so far, with so-far-not-an-item Scarlett (Clare Bowen) and Gunnar (Sam Palladio).
That’s all – oh, and Happy Birthday, Will.
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