Thoughts from the Media Room: Pan Am

We were able to squeeze this in after watching 2 Broke Girls last night and I was pleasantly surprised with this one.

Premise:
Pan Am is a television series centered around the iconic airline Pan American World Airways during the 1960s. The period drama, from writer Jack Orman (ER) and director Thomas Schlamme (The West Wing), focuses on the pilots and flight attendants working for the world-famous airline in 1963.

Going into the season, for some reason out of the two 60's based shows this one had me interested more than the Playboy Club. I didn't know why, but I felt that the writers would be able to do more with this one.

The pilot started off quite well, it set up several plot points including one involving the Cold War that I really didn't see coming when I started the episode. Turns out it might be a deeper show than I thought. These ladies have some secrets and have strong personalities.

What amazed me about the whole thing was that these ladies of the air were almost rock stars back in the day. The hotels they stayed in were beautiful, they were idolized by young girls and were cover page stories on the biggest magazine at the time, Life.

I thought it was written quite well, I thought the acting was believable and the show totally sucked me back into the era, unlike The Playboy Club. I was entertained and I want to see what happens next.

It was good, but it's still no Mad Men and that's the risk that anyone doing a show in this era now faces. If you're looking to cut your shows down to just one 60's era show on network television, choose this one as it's much better than the alternative on NBC. This will give you your fix until Mad Men finally comes back.