Vinyl

Wildly inconsistent but still more than quality enough to justify a second season. We shall never know what it could have been, but fear not, Ballers is still around.

You know guitar rock is dead when it becomes fodder for Prestige Television. That said, for unabashed boomer nostalgia (with the obligatory revisionist concessions to appeal to progressive viewers), it's still sort of fun. Scorsese sets the tone with his nearly self-parodic pilot episode, leaving everyone else to do their best imitation of his style, which at worst means that a lot of it sort of resembles the David O. Russell of American Hustle. It's pretty dumb, but it could have been worse.

Fun wonder-what-could've-been show, but very uneven. Has one of the most infuriatingly obvious "this character is definitely a ghost" bits of all time. Plus that Ernst fellow, who's nigh unwatchable as a Danish character who couldn't possibly sound less Danish.

I can watch Bobby Cannavale snorting cocaine whole day. Unbelievably underrated, brilliant show. If only we had a chance to see more seasons.

The promise of the fantastic pilot, directed by Martin Scorsese, goes unfulfilled, largely because none of the other episodes were directed by him. Bobby Cannavale NEEDS a strong director in order not to be obnoxious, and the whole rest of the season is too unfocused. It seems obvious to me why it was not renewed. Ray Romano is surprisingly good, and Carrington Vilmont's Ernst is fabulous, as are Birgitte Hjort Sørensen and Juno Temple.

Hints at greatness. Some transcendent musical moments, but everything to do with Bobby Cannavale's character is full of cliches and awful. The gangster subplot is also unnecessary and tedious.

Perhaps a bit too much of the old murder mystery and coke infused melodrama.. But, who cares! It's the about the music industry in the 70s!

Excellent.

This aims for Don Draper on coke, but ends up with a tonally confused, often inauthentic portrait of a time period. Cannavele isn't as sociopathic as his Boardwalk Empire character but still fascinating. The casting of Ray Romano is a strange surprise but he works. It's a streaky show - a couple episodes were gripping, others were repetitive or unnecessary. My biggest problem with it is that it didn't capture the birth and life of rock and roll, only its aftermath.