New Fall TV - Swingtown

Well, isn't American TV getting brave!!! Here we have a show set in the seventies about married couples and their swinging lifestyles. We've come a long way since Mad about You.

If any of you were wondering whatever happened to the actor who played Jake Hanson in Melrose Place, well here he is, as the King of the Swingers. Donning a terrible 'tache he is as sexy as cystitis. New to his neighborhood (and subsequently the swing scene) are a couple who I thought were newlyweds, such was their enthusiasm for each other. It turns out they have two teenage children and I can't help feeling that the secrets of these amorous parents' marriage could be a successful show right there. Their PDAs are spotted by Mr and Mrs Swing and they are invited to the party to end all parties. For some reason that's not entirely explained, they feel that consensual sex with other partners is exactly what their not-at-all-ailing marriage needed.

The Bush voting, bible thumping, family values regions of the US are going to hate this, which is why I wanted to love it. But I don't. It feels dated but not in the way that evokes a bygone era. It's like watching the flashback in Cold Case. The clothes and the music create the seventies, but I'm not buying it. If you want to recreate the past watch Mad Men or even Life on Mars. It's as much to do with attitudes and beliefs as it is visual or audio props. Having contemporary characters does not help a retro set show. We need the references and behaviours of what it was like to live in that era.

Since the success of Hugh Laurie in House, there is an abundance of British actors cast in American shows where each one of them has a US accent: Eddie Izzard in The Riches; Damian Lewis in Life; Michelle Ryan in The Bionic Woman; Kevin McKidd in Journeyman; Jamie Bamber in Battlestar Galactica (which isn't even set on Earth, never mind North America) to name but a few. For those of us in Europe, hearing actors' US accents, when we know them to be British is, at first, jarring. It took me so long to get used to Laurie on House, but now I think he is wonderful, on what could be a very average procedural show. Jack Davenport, following his success in Pirates of the Caribbean, plays the lucky new neighbour in Swingtown. Any female who watched This Life on the BBC in the nineties, will always be slightly in love with Miles, the incredibly flawed yet sexy character Davenport played in this pivotal series. Watching him, struggling with the American accent, in this inferior show is just wrong. He is awkward, insipid and I can't help feeling he's slightly embarrassed! The character of his wife is more interesting. While she seems to love her attentive husband, there seems to be a reciprocated affection towards her previous neighbor's husband. Is that who she envisages having non-marital sex with? Unfortunately it's only barely suggested in the pilot.

I applaud the network for such a brave concept, particularly in this pro-family values era. But this is not the show to break ground. A show that is based in the seventies has few teeth for today's age and a network station at the mercy of advertisers is unfortunately not the forum. Gossip Girl has more balls than this one.

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/fall_preview_2007/tools.shtml