The Town of Odyssey

As noted here, Fox is trying out the live musical thing with a production of Grease coming up on January 31st. It appears to so far just be an individual event, not part of an ongoing series like NBC is doing.

I'm not a big Grease fan, but there are some fun songs, and it looks like this could be a fun production. I think I will be able to watch online courtesy of CTV (for my fellow Canadians) soon, so I will at least watch some of it. I was looking at CTV's listings of their online offerings the other day looking to see if they had any figure skating performances archived there, and instead saw the Grease link.

This was an extremely high quality production, I was very impressed!

It was totally different than what NBC has been doing. That's not to say one is better, both are doing something different and both styles are great for what they are. NBC is intentionally doing a stage show, and they do it well. This was a fully immersive production with actual sets, like a live movie.

It also put a big focus on being a live event rather than on the show itself, having a host show behind the scenes of production at commercial breaks. I didn't think it needed all that, the show should be impressive enough knowing it's live you don't have to constantly point it out, but whatever.

I was very impressed as well! You're right that it is a very different type of production. The live audience and everything was very fun, and fit with the mood of the film. The crazy amount of coordination to get the camerawork and angles like that in a live production really amazed me, on top of the fantastic singing and dancing. If there were any mistakes, I didn't notice them. I was really glad that I watched it. Some of the innuendo etc. is what I don't care for in Grease, but watching the fantastic dancing was worth it!

Catspaw wrote:The crazy amount of coordination to get the camerawork and angles like that in a live production really amazed me

The staging of this part in particular blew me away! It's a montage scene played out in real time in one shot. Absolutely superb coordination with the camera movement and costume changes and repositioning between segments.

Yes, that's my favourite part! I was very impressed with how well it was done. It must have taken so much practice and coordination!

Apparently Fox decided to make this into a running series after all. Next up is A Christmas Story Live on December 17th.

Hmm, I won't be seeing that one. I saw that movie many years ago and couldn't figure out why people liked it at all. People who like it can ignore me, but that really does not interest me at all.

-- 09 Dec 2017 08:36 am --

I'll check it out, but only because it's one of these live shows and I want to follow the series from that perspective. The choice doesn't interest me at all. I'm aware of the movie culturally, but I've never seen it. Maybe if I ever do I'll become one of the apparently many people that love it, but I've just never had the desire to find out. I didn't even know it was a musical.

-- 23 Jan 2019 09:54 am --

So, I never actually watched that one after all. I ended up being busy the night it was on, and then saw the universal reaction was that it was absolutely terrible so never bothered to check out the recording. And to my earlier comment, the movie is not a musical so songs were apparently added for this production. Odd.


While NBC's plans seem to have hit a stall, Fox has another show coming up: Rent Live on the 27th.

Making a non-musical into a musical does seem like an odd choice for a musical series.

I've never seen Rent and can't claim a lot of interest in doing so, unless I hear amazing things.

I didn't see it on the original night, but I recorded it and finally watched that a few months ago. Just realized I never published the post:


I knew what this show was, in general, but no real details about it. I had mixed feelings after watching. I thought the television event was pretty good. It had good choreography, really neat staging, and the production itself was well done. But I can't say I enjoyed the actual show very much. I wasn't into the story and I didn't really think the songs were very good. The singing wasn't bad, I mean the songs themselves.

One detail of note is that despite the event's premise this didn't actually end up being performed live, at least on tv. One of the main cast members broke his foot during the dress rehearsal the night before airing. The show was still put on for the live audience as planned, with him performing from a wheelchair, but what was aired on television was nearly entirely prerecoded footage from the dress rehearsal. All that was live from the airdate event was the final scene. I guess that's a real example of "the show must go on."

Speaking of the final scene, it actually featured the original Broadway cast which was neat.