Yes, there are a few originals, but they’re so completely buried you might not notice. Monarch began with the questionable decision to have the show’s music be mostly covers. Monarch delivers maybe two or three total in the episodes I’ve seen.
#Susan sarandon and trace adkins how to#
Empire and Nashville were often flimsy shows when their respective characters were talking or interacting, but damned if they didn’t know how to stage two or three killer songs/performances per episode. It’s amazing how much of the inherent clumsiness of a bad primetime musical soap can be excused if the music is actually good. There’s also no sense that the show knows how each and every character’s behavior makes them unlikable in different ways. Maybe the emotional stuff is undercooked because of the show’s strict adherence to a structure in which every episode builds to a live event - A rodeo! An award show! A Christmas special in July! - with the exact same obligatory elements from song selection to rehearsal to performance, like Monarch was written by an Excel spreadsheet. The soapy stuff is badly developed, and I kept thinking I might have accidentally skipped whole episodes that explained the back-and-forth bickering with Gigi and Nicky or in several of the flat relationships. The show is kinda set in Austin, but definitely has nothing to say about contemporary Texas, and since it was filmed in the Atlanta area, it doesn’t look or feel like Austin or much of anywhere. Oh, and Catt and Ana have their own secret that every single viewer paying even half-attention will have figured out well before it’s revealed.Ī show like this needs to suggest that it’s taking viewers behind the curtain of a flashy-yet-clandestine world, but there’s no indication Monarch has much to say about the contemporary country music landscape or anything ancillary to it. Ana embarks on a completely unjustified flirtation with Nicky’s son Ace (Iñigo Pascual), who has stage fright in the pilot, which is never mentioned again - a bit like Nicky’s daughter (Ava Grace’s Tatum), who through six episodes hasn’t been given even a fifth-tier storyline. Off to the side, but excruciating every time they appear on-screen, are Catt Phoenix (Martha Higareda) demanding stage mom to aspiring singer Ana (Emma Milani). Luke’s having an entirely inappropriate affair of his own. Nicky’s got a philandering British hubby (Adam Croasdell, awful but mostly because of the writing), so she responds by becoming the center of a love triangle between two boring guys with great jawlines, one clean-shaven and one scruffy. Gigi and Nicky begin feuding stupidly about which of them will take over the aforementioned family legacy. Otherwise, the drama in Monarch is by-the-numbers soap stuff. In addition to her medical condition (revealed in the first 10 minutes of the pilot, so this is not a spoiler either), Dottie is harboring some big secrets, which may be related to the flash-forward segments that bookend every episode - scenes featuring a glowering Albie with a shotgun and the plastic-wrapped body of an unidentified person. And finally there’s Luke (Joshua Sasse), whose business-focused approach to Monarch, the family’s record label, has caused him to butt heads with the distinctly anti-pinhead Albie. There’s Gigi (Beth Ditto), whose weight and sexuality never lived up to her mother’s ideals, so she never pursued a career in music despite obvious talent.
There’s Nicky (Anna Friel), who has always desperately craved stardom, but she’s all too aware that given that she’s in her 40s, her moment may have passed.
With her health problems splashed across magazine covers, Dottie has begun to worry about her legacy, which I know because at least a quarter of the dialogue in the Melissa London Hilfers-scripted pilot is Dottie referring to her legacy.ĭottie and Albie’s three kids are the potential caretakers of that legacy, but all three have been pushed to the background or marginalized over the years because of Dottie’s voracious appetite for the spotlight. Sarandon and Trace Adkins play Dottie and Albie Roman, the first couple of country music. 'Animal Control' Renewed for Second Season on Fox
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