Nashville

Nashville is your basic All About Eve (the film not the late  80's pop band) set up. For Bette Davis' starting to fade theatre star Margo Channing, substitute Connie Britton's as starting to fade country star Rayna Jaymes and for Anne Baxter's rising, ambitious Eve Harrington, substitute Hayden Panettiere's rising ambitious Juliette Barnes. OK, Nashville is All About Eve in the same way Sons of Anarchy is Hamlet, but we are in the same post code. 

So, like it or not, we are plunged into the murky (is it really murky?) world of country music. Rayna has to stay on top because her husband lost all his money to those darn bankers and she won't take a penny from her rich, devious daddy. Wow sounds like a country song doesn't it? And all the while little whippersnapper Juliette Barnes is stealing her thunder. Times sure are hard and what's more Rayna's domineering daddy is pushing her husband to run for mayor of Nashville. Dagnabbit.

    

Nashville is well acted and the experienced cast do a sterling job of playing it deadly serious, which is harder than it seems just look at Revenge. The only problem is that there are a lot of characters floating about and they all seem to look the same. So it might take a few episodes to sort out exactly who is who. Plus, much like Treme, this is a show you can get through faster by speeding those pesky songs. I do wonder where this show is going to take us and how it will all end; All About Eve got this territory covered in under two and a half hours, Nashville is going to be a lot longer. It is created by Callie Khouri, who wrote Thelma and Louise, so it could all end at the Grand Canyon instead of the Grand Old Opry.

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