Rare TV Review

Well, my faithful flock, I must say that in these pages -- must be over a thousand of them by now, I fear -- I have never "reviewed" or even commented on a TV show. I don't particularly feel like doing so now, but since the subject matter is so dear to my heart, I can't resist.

I'm referring to the new series "Pan Am." I suppose you've noticed that it isn't called "TWA" or "Delta." Or "Laker Airways," for that matter.

Nope. It's where my father worked for the first 17 years of my life. I have a LOT of memories of Pan Am. (What, your father worked at Nelson Mining Consolidated? Get your own series.)

But . . . for some reason, no matter how they try, NO ONE can manage to recreate an earlier era so that you believe you are THERE. The sixties were the sixties -- you can spot it instantly when it's the REAL sixties and, try as they might, spot it instantly when it's not the real sixties. Oh, sure, they could shoot it in very old videotape or even film, to give it that soft-edged "old" fuzziness, but still . . . the costumes are no doubt thoroughly researched to the last detail, but . . . it just doesn't wash.

I'll tell you what washes: the plane interiors are faithful, down to the Montgolfier balloons that festoon a dividing panel between the lounge (where I often sat) and First Class. The uniforms were spot on. But the actors were purely out of the 21st century.

The storyline was nothing to write home about. Everyone compares this series to "Mad Men" but since I've never seen that, I have no idea what they're on about.

It isn't a comedy.

It isn't a drama.

It's the kind of "Let's get six storylines going that we can switch back and forth to during the whole run" so I assume that makes it a soap opera.

The pilots are astonishingly young and handsome. Pilots who fly for the premier airline in the world are invariably in their fifties, not in their twenties. The stewardesses are impossibly model-like, nothing like the stews I remember from my childhood.

And my one very, very pet peeve: 707s were so loud that you had to shout to your seatmate directly into his ear, never mind whispering under your breath to someone three feet away. I guess that wouldn't make for good television.

Will it succeed? Well, they seem to have dropped a bucket of tropes into the first episode, including a mysterious "man from MI-6" and a French stewardess having an affair.

But you can bet that my carry-on Pan Am bag just acquired a whole lot more cachet.