Pan Am

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away across the Atlantic, some television executives were looking for their next success.  “I know,” said one, “let’s take the ‘Mad Men’ thing, that’s hot right now, and ummm... well make it more, you know, accessible.  How about vampires?  They’re hot right now too.”  Silence.  “Umm... a soap?”  The rest, dear audience, is what brings us ‘Pan Am’.

The series has been strangely marketed.  Something so obviously soapy will grab female viewers, but the ads feature be-girdled, lip-glossed, come-hither hostesses.  Anyone labouring under the impression that that's just to hook an audience of either gender before unleashing a subtle, heavyweight drama along the lines of 'Mad Men' is in for a big disappointment.  Early on, pseudo-beatnik Maggie (Christina Ricci) collides with a man in hat and suit who could, from a distance, be Don Draper, but then you remember that he'd be less likely to sleep with Maggie than to have invented her for a campaign.  This doesn't so much debunk the myth of glamour as promote it.  Golly gee, if your colleague's running late, they'll send a helicopter for you to replace her.  As the brand new aeroplane takes off, one of the crew is still missing, another has to serve her married boyfriend and two more are rival sisters.  One of the latter is also a spy, checking out a supposed Russian traveller.  Don't let us say the show's lightweight, when there could be a Russian around.  This was the Cold War after all.   

The tone is pure froth.  Rome is signalled by car horns and men saying 'Bellissima!' a lot.  London has rain, obviously, a view of Big Ben and rooftops that surely never existed outside a Dore illustration and dark hotel furniture.  Blockbuster-style over-orchestrated music does very little to convince us that, wow, waitressing in a pressurised metal tube was just so amazing and liberating in 1963, any more than the frequent crooner tracks or the single crisis-in-Cuba scene add to the mood.  Costumes that are mufti rather than uniform can be found in this season's TopShop or Selfridges, the hairstyles in Vogue or Vanity.  The revelation at the end of episode one is that the missing purser was a British spy, and she's recruited her replacement.  So, while those Pan Am girls look like they should be in the current Virgin campaign, to the point of walking in step and waving in unison, they're all potential Mata Haris.  Maybe that's why Pan Am nose-dived in the business world?  Whatever.  I'm sure BOAC was a much smoother ride.