'Viva Laughlin' is way off key

The conceit of a musical is that viewers have to suspend disbelief and accept that the characters often break into song. Done well, it's an art form.

But imagine watching a musical that's afraid to be a musical. A musical with just a little bit of music in it.

A musical that's so afraid of being a musical that it's just a show with occasional bits of music that seem so oddly out of place that audiences can't really suspend disbelief and accept them in the middle of the show.

If you can imagine that, you're imagining "Viva Laughlin," CBS' misbegotten attempt to Americanize a truly original, wildly entertaining British series.

"Viva Blackpool," which aired on BBC America two years ago, embraced its oddness. A murder mystery/drama about a guy trying to open a casino in a small resort town, the characters often broke into song and performed in full-on production numbers.

The music wasn't original — the stars sang along with established hits, such as "Viva Las Vegas." "Viva Laughlin" follows that pattern.

As yours truly wrote of "Viva Blackpool," "Defying logic, it works fantastically well. Really."

No such luck with "Viva Laughlin," which premieres tonight (9 p.m., Ch. 2), then moves to its regular time slot on Sunday at 7 p.m. It seems so afraid of being a musical that it barely dips its toe into the genre. And it ends up being a rather dull murder mystery/drama that occasionally lapses into utterly non sequitur musical interludes.

Ripley Holden (Lloyd Owen) is an entrepreneur who dreams of opening a hotel/casino in Laughlin, Nev. But when one of his investors pulls out, Ripley's in real trouble. He goes to Nicky Fontana (Hugh Jackman, who's also an executive producer) for money, but Nicky turns him down flat.

And then the investor who cut Ripley's money off is murdered in Ripley's office.

There's plenty of plot going on here, with Ripley's neglected wife (Madchen Amick), his children (Carter Jenkins and Ellen Woglom), the investor's widow (Melanie Griffith) and the police detective (Eric Winter) trying to solve the murder. But none of it is interesting.

And the plot in "Viva Laughlin" is better than the musical bits, sad to say. It isn't hard to imagine what happened here. The Powers That Be at CBS probably got scared of how offbeat "Viva Blackpool" was and tried to tone it down to make it palatable to American viewers. (Um, apparently they missed the fact that the musical is an American art form.)

Appearing before critics back in July, executive producer Bob Lowry kept dancing away from the term "musical" altogether.

"We're a dramatic television show with music," he insisted, for whatever that's worth. (And it's not worth much. After the interview, Lowry was jettisoned as the show-runner, although he retains his executive-producer credit.)

In trying to tone "Viva Blackpool" down, all the charm, all the joy, all the entertainment value has been removed.

Don't bet on "Viva Laughlin" to last for long.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com