'The Music Man' will be the third in NBC's series of live musical broadcasts, NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt announced today.
It was no surprise that the network would capitalize on the ratings success of its The Sound of Music Live!, which aired last December starring Carrie Underwood, with further ventures into televised live musical theater. It was certainly no surprise to learn that the first follow-up would be another show with kid appeal and young people in the cast: Peter Pan.
The Music Man is yet another family-friendly fiesta of musical theater. Though Meredith Willson's show doesn't center on its child characters, its story of a salesman who cons a small town into paying him to set up a boys' marching band has plenty of G-rated appeal.
The 1957 Broadway production won five Tony Awards, and the 1962 film starring Shirley Jones and Robert Preston earned an Oscar for Best Musical Score. The Simpsons memorably parodied The Music Man in 1993, and ten years later a TV version starred (who else?) Matthew Broderick and Kristin Chenoweth--but that was a movie, not a live performance.
Casting is still in process for the Dec. 4 Peter Pan broadcast, so it'll likely be some time before we learn who'll undertake the roles Robert Preston and Barbara Cook originated in The Music Man on Broadway. Few are betting on Carrie Underwood, whose performance in The Sound of Music was ill-received by critics.
Fox is seeking to capitalize on the new mini-movement too, with a three-hour live broadcast of Grease planned for some time in 2015. Are we entering a new golden age of live television? I don't know. For me, it was a nerve-wracking kind of thrill to watch NBC's The Sound of Music hoping there'd be no screw-ups. I'm not sure how often I could take that kind of pressure.
