(June 30th, 2011.)               Christina Ricci (“Penelope”), Kelli Garner (“Going the Distance”), Karine Vanasse (“Polytechnique”), Margot Robbie (“Neighbours”), Jonah Lotan (“24”) and Michael Mosley (“Justified”) star in the one hour drama series Pan Am, coming to ABC on Sunday night at 10pm, starting this fall.

Passion, jealousy and espionage... They do it all, and they do it at 30,000 feet. The style of the 1960s, the energy and excitement of the Jet Age and a drama full of sexy entanglements deliciously mesh in this thrilling and highly-original new series.  In this modern world, air travel represents the height of luxury and Pan Am is the biggest name in the business. The planes are glamorous, the pilots are rock stars and the stewardesses are the most desirable women in the world. Not only are these flyboys and girls young and good looking, but to represent Pan Am they also have to be educated, cultured and refined. They’re trained to handle everything from in-air emergencies to unwanted advances, all without rumpling their pristine uniforms or mussing their hair. There’s Dean (Jonah Lotan), a cocky, charismatic and ambitious new pilot, the first of a new breed not trained in the war. On the sly against company policy, he’s dating Bridget, a stunning beauty with a mysterious past. A rebellious bohemian, Maggie (Christina Ricci) turns into a buttoned up professional for work so she can see the world. Rounding out the crew are flirtatious Collette (Karine Vanasse), the adventurous Kate (Kelli Garner) and, finally, Laura (Margot Robbie) – Kate’s beauty queen younger sister, a runaway bride, who recently fled a life of domestic boredom to take to the skies.

Once the excitement created by the initial images of the beginning of the jet age begin to fade, this one hour drama quickly settles into soap opera country. There is an attempt to add an element of intrigue with a cloak and dagger type of back story involving the jet setting stewardesses and the American CIA, but even that is not enough to keep the audience interested through the pilot episode, let alone through a 22 episode season. The star power of Christina Ricci will help to draw an audience to this series. But without a much stronger reason to watch, she will quickly become just another character in this series. A series I am sure sounded better in the pitch meeting than what developed in the pilot episode.

Like so many TV shows before, the producers have created a script that is more of a mini movie and in the process they limit themselves and their story so much that there is no way to deliver on the promise made in the first episode. At first it seems kind of romantic. People flying around the world and getting involved in romances and spying, but in the end, it is about a bunch of people who take other people places. These days, an airline is essentially a bus with wings and the people who fly, it is true, do get to see better places, but the process is far from glamorous. I think it will be a hard sell to expect an audience to watch a time when they got better service and make a TV show that revolves around that premise. 

 

 - Editor

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