Insights and Outlooks: Getting Serious With Series Television Musicals

Television musicals come in two major categories: the series musical and the special musical. Both of them developed in the early 1950s, notwithstanding the efforts of earlier television pioneers to try them out with works like 1939 New York City broadcast of Topsy and Eva Television Edition featuring the Duncan sisters, two white Vaudeville entertainers performing the two named roles, one in black-face, the other without makeup, or the 1944 Du Mont network program The Boys from Boise, about a group of showgirls stranded on an Idaho ranch.

The 1950s saw an aesthetic statement issued by Paddy Chayefsky, one of early American television's most consistently successful writers, who wrote that "lyrical writing, impressionistic writing, and abstract expressionistic writing are appalling in television whereas they might be gauged exciting in the theater."¹ This conservative view, shared by many of early television's writers, producers and directors, many of whom had begun their careers in radio or the theatre, demonstrates how different television was considered in comparison to the theatre and, probably, from film. The television musical had trouble claiming its place in a medium that abhorred the lyrical, given that at the time of television's infancy, the lyrical Hollywood musical was in its prime.

The musical became part of the domestic entertainment regime, just after the talk show, the situation comedy or the drama. Other programs, like news and sports remained the focus of those who watched television in taverns and bars, who were predominantly white, male, and lower-middle class, according to Anna McCarthy.² Needless to say, poor reception and the small screens made it less attractive to watch long shows, and so many network executives tended to acquire the rights to successful Broadway or Hollywood shows and edit them to about an hour, the time considered suitable for television.

Live-action television musicals tended to piggy-back on Hollywood film musicals, despite the fact that there are significant differences between the two genres. These differences include the medium itself - television - which could be viewed in private on a smaller-than-life screen, on a small piece of furniture, often in the home. Film musicals were viewed through a public room on a huge screen, and the lives of average Americans in the depression were much less grand than the lives of movie musicals of the time - Flying down to Rio(1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934) - which showed aristocrats, the super wealthy, and the famous.

Of course, like other musicals, these tended to be of several identifiable types: Rick Altman identified several useful categories of Hollywood musical, which can also be applied to television. The fairy tale musical is a show that shows us another place, whether it is a fantasy land, a dream sequence, or another country. The second type is the show musical, a show-about-a-show. This became the most common type in series television musicals in the early years, because when one already knows the characters of a television series as non-singers, one needs a device to accept the change in verisimilitude that allows them to burst into song. The third type is the folk musical, which is a show about the presumed familiar.

The first television musicals developed as part of a move toward "specials," a move instigated by NBC executive Pat (Sylvester) Weaver in 1954, as a way of drawing attention away from faithful viewers of television series like Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town or Lucille Ball's I Love Lucy. The first of these musical specials was Satins and Spurs, an original folk musical featuring Betty Hutton playing a role reminiscent of her role in the famous Hollywood movie musical, Annie Get Your Gun. He continued with his special presentation concept, introducing the highly successful March 1955 broadcast of Peter Pan with Mary Martin. NBC claimed that 65 million people watched this program when it first aired, making it (if this is true) the most-watched television program to that time.

The relative length of these specials - between 90 minutes and two hours - meant that characters had time to develop, and that complex psychological situations could be expressed. It was in 1956 that the series television made an attempt to incorporate the musical into its aesthetic. It was a something of a risk when the most popular situation comedy series, I Love Lucy, announced it would include a musical episode in its European tour segment of the popular show. "Lucy goes to Scotland" (February 20, 1056) had its roots in the spectacular success of Peter Pan; it was impossible to ignore the seismic shift that occurred in viewership the evening Peter Pan was broadcast, and so CBS made several attempts to lure its audiences back to Ed Sullivan and Lucille Ball, their surest bets for financial security.

Conceptually, "Lucy Goes to Scotland" was inspired by Vincente Minelli's film Brigadoon and the television broadcast of Peter Pan. The episode clearly drew on Brigadoon's locale, Scotland, and its two pairs of lovers, the one serious and the other comic. There are notable differences too; the songs³ in "Lucy Goes to Scotland" are entirely comic, and bear little or no resemblance to Brigadoon songs. This episode was highly successful and yet it did not engender further musical episodes in this or any other television series. On the other hand, while this episode may have owed its inspiration to the movie musical, it is in no way a parody of Brigadoon. The storyline to "Lucy goes to Scotland" is a comedy, featuring Desi Arnaz attempting a Scottish accent and sporting a kilt, while Fred and Ethel Mertz are dressed in a second-rate dragon costume. The humour in this show was based on these situations rather than any references to Brigadoon. Unlike Brigadoon, it was cast in the form of a dream sequence, a very successful formula for outlandish situations later on in television series. Strangely, despite its success and reception, subsequent years saw very few television series with musical episodes. And the next notable fairy tale musical was not until the Kramdens went on a similar ten-hour-long-episode European tour on The Honeymooners in 1957.

The next major series musical was December 18, 1963, with DesiLu Productions' The Dick van Dyke Show's Christmas episode called "The Allan Brady Show Presents...." The premise for this program was that Rob Petrie (van Dyke) worked for Allan Brady, and as a Christmas episode of this television program, he, his wife, his son, and his co-workers, all performed in the show, singing, playing instruments, and dancing.⁴ Needless to say, this program was a particularly effective show musical; but another popular 1960s television sit-com, Gilligan's Island, incorporated several show musical episodes into its peculiar premise. Seven very different people are marooned on a tropical desert island, and various people drop by. The first musical episode, titled "Don't Bug The Mosquitoes" December 9, 1965, concerned a Beatles-esque rock band, who wants to relax on the island. The male castaways form a rock band called The Gnats, and the women form another called The Honey Bees, driving the Mosquitoes away. A second episode features a Hollywood film producer who crash lands on the island in the episode called "The Producer," broadcast October 3, 1966. The castaways mount a production of Hamlet with the music of Carmen (their only recording). The fairy tale musical is the most common type of musical in television series because it took the regular characters out of their normal world, thereby allowing them to act differently without causing any distortion of the accepted verisimilitude.

ABC's Happy Days episodes, "Be My Valentine" and "An American Musical" were based on this premise. "Be My Valentine," broadcast February 14, 1978, is a series of vignettes concerning the characters and their Valentine' s Day memories, prompting them to sing standard songs. In the case of the second such program, "An American Musical," broadcast in 1981, Chachi is writing a term paper on immigration, causing various cast members to perform painful standard numbers illustrating the immigrant experience. As with many other television shows, this episode did not fall comfortably into the fairy tale musical, given the nostalgic folk quality of the show in general, and the show within a show quality of the vignettes. In point of fact, the abysmal quality of this episode and reception of this episode may be because the audience did not understand what these musical episodes were trying to say. The show never again achieved the popularity it had in the 1970s again. This was just one of several failed attempts to reinvigorate television in the beginning of the 1980s.

Cross-pollination of the genres was in some ways the saving grace of the series television musical in the 1980s: "The Love Boat Follies," the most stunning example of a series television musical ever made to that time was almost totally without precedent. The brainchild of Canadian composer and lyricist Ray Jessel, this episode featured the recurring character of The Love Boat as well as guests who were world famous in the real world as performers. The difference was that these characters not only performed their own trademark material, but they also played characters that were closely related to the crew. Since the program was based around a production called "The Love Boat Follies" which would be the entertainment on the boat, and since the program was based on the principle of guest stars interacting with the regular crew, these performers were not particularly outlandish guests. The Love Boat had in fact featured all but one of the guest stars in earlier episodes, so when they returned to perform in the show, their presence was organic to the program. The first hint of irony though happens right in the opening segment, when the cast of normally non-singing characters bursts into the song "Let's Put the Show on Right Here." During the course of the show, each of these performers does a number that made them famous, as well as newly composed material. The program ends with the show-within-a-show, in which the entire cast performs "I Wanna Sing a Show Tune."

Although it is not reasonable to credit The Love Boat musical with reviving the series television musical, there is some evidence that this was the genesis of the fairy-tale parody style of show, because it managed to incorporate several story-lines, performers who could attract audiences, take advantage of the attractive qualities of the "special" (it was in two one-hour segments), and still retain the consistency of the television series in which it was nested.

The fact that all of these shows were nested in television series was ultimately what made them special. There were two notable efforts to create entirely musical television series: the modestly successful That's Life, in 1968-69, and the notorious Cop Rock in 1990. In all three cases, this gimmick proved to be both overwhelmingly expensive and the subject of a certain amount of ridicule. The first of the three programs was That' s Life, a fairly successful, but ultimately underwhelming series that ran for a single season from September 24, 1968, until May 20, 1969, on ABC. It followed the relationship of a young couple, Robert Dickson and Gloria Quigley (Robert Morse and E. J. Peaker). Although some of the musical material was original, composed by Elliot Lawrence and Martin Charnin, many of the songs were Broadway or Popular standards. It featured about six songs in each hour-long episode, as well as guest stars like George Burns, Ethel Merman, Tony Randall, Phil Silvers, Robert Goulet and Liza Minnelli. It did not last beyond its first season, though, and spawned no imitations.

The second such program, Cop Rock, ran from September until December of 1990, but was cancelled because ratings were low and the program was too expensive to mount. Steven Bochco and William Finkelstein, along with a relatively untested group of performers, created a series of hour-long crime dramas set to predominantly newly composed music, in various popular styles. This program was deliberately artificial, presenting singing policemen, lawyers, criminals and juries, performing popular music in the style of the time - gospel, blues, rap, and rock. Audience reaction was extreme in both directions: those who liked it were very complimentary, and those who did not (and these were the majority - check http://www.jumptheshark.com) were adamant and vocal in their dislike of the premise. Ironically, a program whose reality is musical theatre was vociferously ridiculed by viewers, but this state seems to have been embraced when it was used as a dream, a parody, or part of an elaborate artifice.

Although this was not an American program, it was influential in certain regards upon American producers: Dennis Potter's acclaimed 1986 mini-series The Singing Detective, used the "miming" device, used to great effect in his later series. The music in The Singing Detective illuminates the mental state of its protagonist, Philip Marlow (played by Michael Gambon), incapacitated by an illness, and lying in a semi-conscious state in hospital. The song "I've Got You Under My Skin" introduces us to Marlow, passing his time in hospital recreating his own early screenplay, also called The Singing Detective. This program incorporates original recordings of popular songs from the 1930s and 1940s, but memories are evoked by old songs (Marlow's father is seen singing in the voice of Dick Haymes, "It Might as Well be Spring"), and the strangeness of the hospital ward is brought to light by a parodic rendition of "Dry Bones."

Cop Rock was inspired by the work of Dennis Potter - in several interviews, creator Steven Bochco credits The Singing Detective as a source of inspiration. Cop Rock differs from The Singing Detective though, in a critical way: the songs were newly composed, largely by Randy Newman. Indeed, the newness of these songs was part of the problem: Potter had used the songs as references to the past, just as Jessel had used standards in The Love Boat. Nostalgia is a powerful tool in television, and when songs are new, they are unable to stir nostalgia.

The musical episode in the fourth season of Chicago Hope entitled "Brain Salad Surgery" (October 15, 1997) was also a dream sequence inspired, according to its director Bill D'Elia, by the BBC mini-series The Singing Detective. In this episode, Dr. Aaron Shutt, played by Adam Arkin, collapses with an aneurism and reviews his life as a musical. The songs are consistently used to illuminate elements of Dr. Shutt's life that would otherwise have been inexpressible by the character in a "realistic" situation. At the same time, the irony of featuring songs that would be well-known to the target audience is a powerful tool of ready-made subtext.

The recent programs that have used musical elements to great effect in a manner similar to The Singing Detective are Ally McBeal and The Drew Carey Show. Ally McBeal presented a musical episode, inspired by The Singing Detective, at the end of their third season, airing on May 22, 2000. This episode, entitled "Ally McBeal: The Musical, almost" had an original score by Randy Newman, but the songs were treated like standards, drawing attention to themselves rather than pushing the drama forward.

The interspersing of familiar musical material with original material has become increasingly effective in television musicals since television demands a certain familiarity with the characters not required by film or stage productions, and parody has become an effective means of incorporating new and familiar material. In live-action television series, parody is often combined with dream-sequence or the show musical to capture a particular mood. In general, parody of the Broadway (or Hollywood) musical genre is more common than the parody of a specific show. Notable exceptions to this rule include the musical episodes of Scrubs or Drew Carey which have scenes clearly modelled on West Side Story's "Cool." Hercules: The Legendary Journeys has two episodes with music that were modelled on the 1992 Baz Luhrmann film, Strictly Ballroom, and Jennie Livingston's fairly obscure 1990 drag queen pageant documentary, Paris is Burning, suggesting that the writers of this program knew their audiences well.

More recently, several series programs have incorporated complete musical episodes; several notable programs have used parody in a manner similar to the way they parody contemporary life. The most notable musical episodes were aired on Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both of these series are fantasy programs that are suffused with exaggeration and with irony. In the case of Xena, the first musical episode, "The Bitter Suite," broadcast on Valentine's Day, 1998, is a dream-sequence, with seven newly composed songs and a through-composed soundtrack, while the second, "Lyre, Lyre, Heart's On Fire," broadcast January 22, 2000, is a kind of ancient battle of the bands, incorporating popular songs remixed to fit with the strange atmosphere of the show. Throughout this series, songs had occasionally been used, so this musical was not a shock to regular viewers. Buffy the Vampire Slayer series creator Joss Whedon wrote and directed "Once more, with feeling," premiered on November 6, 2001. Working with the genre of fantasy, Whedon wrote an episode in which a magical power forces everyone in the town of Sunnydale to sing their feelings, revealing more than they want to about themselves.

Although these musicals are in some ways like the earliest series television musicals, with references to other musicals (the chimney sweepers in the background are performing choreography from Mary Poppins), they differ in the sense that there are soundtracks throughout, giving them something of an ironic melodramatic quality, and the songs contain dramatic plot-revealing lyrics, similar to the style adopted in by contemporary Broadway composers like Stephen Sondheim or Kander and Ebb. In addition, in all of these examples, the actors perform their own musical material, adding a (dubious) element of authenticity into the show. Whether this is an aesthetically pleasing device is not necessarily relevant to faithful viewers of the Buffy program. Nevertheless realism - a word invoked by television producers in the 1950s to discourage opera and musical theatre broadcasts - is given a different meaning when applied to a program that is based on an altered premise of reality. There are undeniable elements of "lyrical writing, impressionistic writing and abstract expressionistic writing" in this episode, but because of the nature of the work, realism was also expressed in this work. Lyrics are enjambed frequently, drawing attention away from the rhymed couplets of most of the songs, there is regular reference to the fact that people are singing, and naturalistic writing within the genre of musical comedy. While it is generally accepted that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been a trend-setting program in many ways, the acknowledged difficulty in making this episode and the lack of obvious financial pay-off has prevented this from becoming a common occurrence in series television.

In the end, the series television musical has elements of Broadway shows, of Hollywood movies, of television as a genre, of the musical genre, the genre of film, and its own past. In fact, it has become such a palimpsest of verisimilitudes that parody itself has become a work of art.

Sandy Thorburn is a lecturer at McMaster University in Hamilton, and a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto.

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