The TV Column

Roadies follows the boys (and girls) with the band

Roadies, the new comedy/drama from Cameron Crowe, stars Luke Wilson and Carla Gugino, and debuts at 8 p.m. today on Showtime.
Roadies, the new comedy/drama from Cameron Crowe, stars Luke Wilson and Carla Gugino, and debuts at 8 p.m. today on Showtime.

Fans who remember the iconic coming-of-age film Almost Famous are going to love this new Showtime series.

That is if they can get beyond a couple of gratuitous sex scenes that seem to be included simply because it's a premium channel and they can get away with it.

I've joked in the past that Showtime feels compelled to bare a few breasts within the first minute or so to pander to that segment of its subscribers who expect it.

Well, the music-theme adult comedy Roadies premieres at 8 p.m. today and unabashedly begins with a lusty bedroom scene. Welcome to Showtime. Now, go put some clothes on.

Roadies is the first original TV series from Cameron Crowe, who is the creator, executive producer, writer and director.

Bonus: J.J. Abrams (Lost, Fringe, Star Trek, Alias, Star Wars: Episode VII -- The Force Awakens) serves as co-executive producer. Also executive producing is Emmy and Tony nominee Winnie Holzman (My So-Called Life, Wicked).

That's some impressive clout behind the project.

As a reminder, Almost Famous, Crowe's semi-autobiographical 2000 film, told the tale of teenager William Miller (Patrick Fugit) as he learned about life while covering the tour of the fictitious rock band Stillwater for Rolling Stone.

Crowe won an Oscar for the screenplay and had the rest of us singing Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" for weeks.

Roadies is set in the same general universe as Almost Famous but deals not so much with the band as with the backstage comedy/drama of the de facto family of dedicated roadies touring with the (fictitious) Staton-House Band.

Roadies, in case you don't know, are the worker bees who move a tour from town to town and set up the arena venues. They are, Crowe says, "Drawn together through a passion for music."

Heading the ensemble are Luke Wilson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Old School) as tour manager Bill Hanson and Carla Gugino (San Andreas, The Brink) as production manager Shelli Anderson.

In a Showtime publicity interview, Gugino says, "Shelli has to put out a lot of fires. She works very closely with Bill. They're really different energetically, but they complement each other very well, which is a little disconcerting."

Why disconcerting? Shelli and Bill share a lot of intimacies because they're on the road together, but she's married, he's not. Shelli, however, rarely sees her husband because he's off being the production manager for Taylor Swift.

Wilson adds, "It's fun to be playing a character who feels lucky to be doing what he's doing. My character tries to keep everybody happy and take care of all the band politics. He's been in the business since he was, like, 18, but he's still out there on the road. It'll be fun to see how a guy survives like that.

"Before I started [the role], I got to talk to the tour managers of The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and they said that you always have the answer even if you don't have the answer. Sometimes your job is to make your guy think that he thought of the solution. I look forward to playing a character that'll have some changes."

Crowe says that Bill and Shelli are like the mother and father of the roadie crew, and Abrams adds, "I think some of the greatest stories are not about the families we're born into, but the families that we make."

As the series begins, the happy little roadie family is about to be shaken up by the arrival of Reg Whitehead (Rafe Spall, One Day), a numbers-crunching British financial adviser sent by the record label to tighten the band's tour finances.

How much of an outsider is Rafe? He doesn't even know how to pronounce the band's name correctly. Not everyone will survive his belt- tightening.

Others in the Roadies ensemble include British actress Imogen Poots (The Look of Love) as Kelly Ann, a feisty, conflicted young idealist who is considering leaving the tour. Poots steals every scene she's in.

Rainn Wilson (The Office) plays Bryce Newman, a self-aggrandizing music journalist; Christopher Backus (Sons of Anarchy) is Rick, bass player for the Staton-House Band; and Catero Alain Colbert (About a Boy) plays Tom Staton, the band's lead singer.

The series has the usual first-episode rough spots as characters are being established and the premise is being set up. Too many pontificating monologues work their way in. But Gugino puts it best when she says, "What we used to be able to do in film, we now do in television -- it's character-driven stories."

Fun and Games. ABC's Sunday game show theme night kicks in today. Celebrity Family Feud with host Steve Harvey airs at 7 p.m.; The $100,000 Pyramid with Michael Strahan follows at 8; and Match Game with host Alec Baldwin debuts at 9.

Note: The postponed Season 3 of Murder In the First debuts at 9 p.m. today on TNT.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:

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Style on 06/26/2016

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