14 DAY TRIAL // If you’re to believe many of the things said online right now about NBC’s “Sound of Music Live” 3-hour broadcast, a retelling of the Broadway play of the same name (not of the movie, mind you), this was the worst idea network executives ever came up. The ratings, though, tell a different story.
So, the other night, the von Trapps were brought back to life again in what is considered one of the most expensive and complicated productions on TV in recent years. However, spectacular it was not.
Reactions to the 3-hour broadcast are still pouring in and they’re anything but glowing. Leading couple Carrie Underwood and Stephen Moyer were overshadowed by Aurora McDonald, Laura Benanti, and Christian Borle, and failed to impress viewers because Carrie can’t act to save her life, while Moyer is – at best! – a half-decent singer.
Before the show aired, NBC had boasted that it wanted to introduce a whole new segment of the audience to the beloved story but, now that the whole thing is over, many voices online are saying the effort was simply not worth it.
Fans were not impressed, rushing to Twitter and other social networking websites to vent their frustration, voice their anger and, depending on each case, make fun of one thing or another.
Reviewers weren’t impressed either, as CNN can confirm.
“As her multiple Grammys and her legion of country music fans will attest, the quality of Underwood's singing voice is not the problem. It's that she doesn't know how to use that voice to sing in character, or what to do with her face when she's trying,” USA Today’s TV critic Robert Bianco says.
“When Carrie Underwood stepped out on the (wooded, not grassy) hills and started singing, I wished the hills were alive with the sound of hungry mountain lions. Why wasn't she Julie Andrews? Is being Julie Andrews so much to ask for? No chic pixie cut either. Heidi braids,” Time magazine writes.
“Moyer is a better singer than Russell Crowe. But he's no Hugh Jackman. Or Neil Patrick Harris. Or Taye Diggs. Or even Nathan Fillion. His attempt at conveying an emotional hollowness just reads as mildly constipated, his furrowed eyes and pursed lips doing all the work. He doesn't look stoic, he just looks clenched,” a review in THR reads.
And these are just some of the most “harmless” things said about the production online because fans didn’t show even half of this kind of restraint.
However, at the end of the day, we might as well ask: does any of this matter when NBC draws the line? It probably doesn’t, because figures from Nielsen indicate that it was top dog in the ratings, with a whopping 18.47 million believed to have tuned in to see the show. They probably vilified it later or even before it was over, but they still watched it.
So, did you see “Sound of Music Live” on NBC? If you did, what did you think of it?
