A look a fictional famous rock band’s touring crew, “Roadies” is the first TV series from filmmaker Cameron Crowe (“Say Anything …” “Singles,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Almost Famous,” “Vanilla Sky,” “Elizabethtown,” “We Bought A Zoo,” “Aloha”), who directed the first three episodes and wrote two of those three. “My So-Called Life” creator Winnie Holzman produces and wrote episode two.
“Roadies” does feel like Crowe – far less wonderful than “Almost Famous” but also less taxing than “Aloha.” Middling Crowe, maybe on the level of “Singles”; that still puts it well above average among TV hourlongs, or even pay-TV hourlongs. It also leans a little harder into comedy than most hourlongs you’ll find on HBO, Showtime or Starz.
A lot of the focus is on light-rigger Kelly Ann, who loves the rock band for which she’s working, but also earned a partial scholarship to a New York film school in which she may or may not ultimately enroll. Kelly Ann is played by sexy 27-year-old Imogen Poots, a super-busy Brit movie actress (“Filth,” “A Long Way Down,” “She’s Funny That Way,” “That Awkward Moment,” “Need For Speed,” ““A Country Called Home,” “Green Room,” “Knight of Cups,” “Popstar,” “Frank & Lola”) beguiling on the small screen as the spunky, skateboarding true believer who finds herself facing down a super-groupie caught masturbating with the lead vocalist’s microphone.
The other leads are Luke Wilson (“Bottle Rocket,” (“The Royal Tenenbaums”) and Carla Gugino (“Karen Sisco,” “Wayward Pines”) as the tour manager and the tour’s production manager, respectively. Viewers may think at first that the pair have a romantic history because they talk to each other about acquiring a new nanny. This may not prove the case. Gugino’s always aces, but Wilson flounders in a role that turns out to be annoying and not that interesting, at least in the first three hours.
Also getting a lot of screen time is Rafe Spall (“The Big Short,” “The BFG”), who plays an efficiency expert hired by the band to get its touring costs under control. I got a big laugh out of his episode-two confrontation with a New Jersey crew member who initially sports a fake British accent.
In the same episode, I laughed at the crew’s bored reaction after sleepy Kelly Ann takes a nasty spill from her upper bunk onto a bus floor. I also liked the way Crowe dovetailed Kelly Ann’s final episode-one moments into the movie that got her that film-school scholarship.
The actors playing the band members get about the same amount of screen time Martin Sheen got in the early episodes of “The West Wing,” which is to say not much.
While I bailed out of HBO’s flaccid music-biz drama “Vinyl” at the three-hour mark, I instructed my DVR to give Showtime’s “Roadies” a season pass.
… At the end of Almost Famous, Crowe's young stand-in William Miller asks guitar god Russell Hammond what he loves about music. "To begin with?" Russell tells him. "Everything." It's a love that Crowe himself shares, and one that's obvious throughout Roadies. Is that love enough to carry the new show over its many flaws until it settles on a tone and an actual story and character arcs? Maybe not, but like Dorothy Boyd, I just want to be inspired, and I'm willing to give Crowe and Holzman another seven hours to see if they can do it. …
... this time, Mr. Crowe loves his subject too well and too blindly, producing a lecture in Rockology 101 that is dramatically flaccid, burdened by respect — and, yes, sanctimonious.… I’m a television critic; don’t listen to me. Listen to Lester Bangs, who reminded us, through Mr. Crowe, that it is possible and necessary to love a thing yet see it clearly, that an excess of reverence is not rock’s friend.
... If “Roadies” spent half as much time showing us what roadies actually do as it wastes on framing gazes of tortured longing, it would be a very different, which is to say much better, show. …
... a chore to watch, with nonstop exaltation of the roadie life, the personal (yet ineffable) connection people feel to music and the relentless call of the asphalt. It’s one of those overwrought shows where people yell “And ANOTHER thing!” about nothing much. …
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
... While the “Roadies” pilot suggests it could set up a winning series, episode three proves a disaster, with Rainn Wilson guest starring as a music critic who posts a negative review of the Staton-House Band. The roadies’ reaction to the review is unrealistic, over-the-top, predictable and unfunny. Is this just one lousy episode or a sign the series is headed down a bad road? We’ll see. …
... Unfortunately, the characters in “Roadies,” writer-director Cameron Crowe’s new Showtime series about a rock band’s road crew, come off like an irritating Sorkin ensemble. They’re not as overly brainy or robotic as Sorkin’s worst, but each tries far too hard to be a lovable know-it-all. They’re terribly self-serious, too, treating their work with all the high drama and self-importance of the Night’s Watch on “Game of Thrones.” And they keep reminding us that they cherish the romance of their touring careers more than we could ever possibly understand. …
... a massively disappointing series in large part to the expectations that Crowe brings …
... The first episode of “Roadies” is more tolerable than the even longer pilot for the similarly themed ’70s rock drama “Vinyl,” but saying the Showtime program is “better” than the HBO entry is like comparing a head cold with a broken leg. … It makes you wonder, if Cameron Crowe can't make a good TV series about rock and roll, can anybody?
10 p.m. Sunday. Showtime.
