Swingtown's Seventies get put before the jury

TALES FROM THE DOUBLEKNIT WASTELAND: CBS’ new summer drama Swingtown debuted to great numbers – 8.6 million viewers, according to the Hollywood Reporter, even though the stiffest competition it was up against that night, in the bleary aftermath of an especially unimpressive primetime season, was a horror anthology on NBC.

The mere act of debuting a sexy drama about spouse-swapping suburbanites based in the summer of the U.S. Bicentennial in the first flush of this year's summer has an indelibly ‘70s feel about it. Well, I was there, baby, a TV junkie in my early teens who was glued to the half-dozen channels our backyard antenna pulled in for some clues to the increasingly confusing world around me. There are a lot of things Swingtown gets right, and a lot it gets wrong, but it’s already working with a handicap as the near-definitive retrospective take on the decade has already been made – Ang Lee’s 1997 movie version of Rick Moody’s novel The Ice Storm.

There’s a distinct network cheesiness to Swingtown that actually makes it a rather mind-blowing approximation of what Moody’s novel might have been like if it were a ‘70s TV series and not a book. Thirty years ago, CBS would have been obliged to be a lot more moralistic in its treatment of the Bruce and Susan Miller, who haul themselves a couple of notches up the middle-class ladder to find themselves in the well-upholstered lap of the sexual revolution -- courtesy of their sexy new neighbours, Tom and Trina Decker, while aided by Trina’s collection of bathing suits and Tom’s very suggestive Harry Reems moustache.

Today, however, CBS is playing catch-up with the Joneses – Showcase, FX, HBO and AMC all have critically-acclaimed hour-long dramas -- and they’re determined to get a piece of that audience. They’ve come out swinging – pun intended – but there are a lot of wrong notes. For one, everything moves too fast. Episode one ends with the Millers already trailing the Deckers into the bedroom at their 4th of July party, overcoming their initial misgivings about this violation of their marriage vows without much of a backward glance. The pacing feels a bit frog-marched and some of the characterizations – especially Miriam Shor as Janet Thompson, Susan’s uptight soon-to-be-former-best friend – are far too tidy.

They also treat us to Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way blaring from a radio at a teenage beach party, when the single wasn't be released until that Christmas. The choice of nearly wall-to-wall soundtrack tunes – Captain & Tennille, Bowie, Chicago, Rita Coolidge – feels a bit obvious and I wonder if procuring the rights for all of this Top 40 tunage will either make the DVD box set too pricey or prompt last-minute substitutions of cheesy cover versions.

One thing they got right, at least, is that junior high girls were tough – far tougher than the boys, and I have the mental scars to prove it. At this point I’m far more interested in how the Miller and Thompson kids will fare than their randy parents because I know from experience that they definitely won’t make it out of that decade in one piece.