Another Try at Genre-Bending

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The mixing of genres can be interesting when it works, but when it doesn’t, it’s usually a disaster.

The producers of the forthcoming CBS TV primetime series, Viva Laughlin, based on the BBC series Viva Blackpool, will see if they can avoid the shoals. The series will feature mystery-suspense plots augmented with musical-theater sequences, the network has revealed. USA Today explains:

Imagine if your life came scored and choreographed.

That’s the experience of Viva Laughlin‘s central character, Ripley Holden. When he wants to open a casino, he struts about and joins Elvis in Viva Las Vegas. When his predatory mistress won’t let him go, they engage in an aggressive duet of Blondie’s One Way or Another. When it’s time to put it all on the roulette wheel, he gets stoked by adding his voice to Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s Let It Ride.

Film star Hugh Jackman is serving as executive producer and will occasionally appear on the show, which has raised some attention for the series. 

The network is hoping the addition of musical sequences will bring new life to the mystery-suspense genre, says Shari Ann Brill of media buyer Carat, as quoted in the USA Today article:

"In order to attract more and younger viewers, you have to offer something different. But I just don’t know if the typical CBS viewer, who is so accustomed to criminal procedurals, will take to something very different," she says.

This sort of thing has been tried before, and has always failed both with critics and audiences, as in the ludicrous Steven Bochco series Cop Rock.

The reason is very simple: although the musical sequences may increase our understanding of the characters, that is not what suspense fiction is about. It’s about story, story, and story. The musical sequences inevitably interrrupt the flow of the suspense story. The two forms just don’t fit together. How the producers mean to solve that problem, I cannot imagine.

Tags: musical, mystery, suspense, Viva Blackpool, Viva Laughlin