Magic City

HBO has Boardwalk Empire, and AMC scored with Mad Men. ABC tried with PAN AM, and NBC failed with The Playboy Club. It seems that the dramatic period piece is hard to get right. While beautiful costumes and an impeccable set are obvious ingredients, it seems  your odds of success are better if you have the freedom that comes with  being a cable network. Starz might have realized this and is exercising all its liberties with the new series Magic City. Unfortunately, it is going to take more than copious nudity to keep people interested in this choppy, underperformed production. 

At a glance, the plot is intriguing enough. Set in 1950’s Miami,  Jeffery Dean Morgan (Grey’s Anatomy, Supernatural) stars as  Isaac “Ike” Evans, the owner of Miami’s most prestigious hotel the Miramar Playa.  Tan, muscular and standing 6’ 2”, Jeffery Dean Morgan looks the part of a Miami high roller, but gives an average performance. This will need to improve if the show has any chance of achieving a fraction of the success it is aiming for. 

As the sole proprietor of the hotel, Evans will do anything to keep his livelihood thriving, even make a ominous deal with Jewish mob boss Ben “the Butcher” Diamond (Danny Huston.)  The pilot introduces the viewer to this main vein of the story, but it also takes the opportunity to make the audience acquainted with every other potential character and B-line that will undoubtedly come to flourish this season. The entire Evans family make appearances.  A notable performance are given by Alex Rocco who plays Arthur Evans, Isaac’s father. Rocco is most famous for his role as Moe Greene in The Godfather. Since most of his lines in Magic City are discussing shady dealings, Rocco’s believability is no surprise; he has had some practice over the years. Stevan Strait also is wonderful as  Evans’ oldest son, the hardworking playboy.  In addition to the whole Evans clan, the fifty minute pilot also bounces through fringe hotel workers, everyone’s love interests, the Cuban revolution’s effect on Miami, and Frank Sinatra’s meal preferences. For this reason, the whole thing is chaotic and overwhelming. It is difficult to decide who and what you are suppose to care about, since nothing is allowed to develop naturally...or at all really. 

For certain, throughout this unfocused mess there are a lot of naturally-developed breasts which adds to the historical accuracy of the show. That may sound a bit absurd until you stop and consider that today’s Miami, Florida is full of surgically-sculpted, hairless, itsy-bitsy women. Finding local extras that fit the look of a full-bodied, mid-20th century woman was probably not easy and required conscience screening. This goes for the guys as well. The beaches in Magic City  are full of men with a full chests of hair, since waxing wasn’t big in those days. Costumes and expert make up can only do so much, and there are times when they do nothing at all. Casting Director Bill Marinella did well in remembering that. 

When the characters are dressed, the costumes are perfect. Adding beauty and romanticized-nostalgia to each scene, the clean suits and lush dresses standout amid the  lack luster dialogue. When Evans zips his much younger, diamond-draped wife, Vera (Olga Kurylenko) into her emerald-green, full shirted evening gown before a big party, his young daughter comes in complaining, “Fluffy won’t get off my sweater and he’s making it all...” Evans chimes in, “Fluffy.” Evan is dripping of dapper in a perfectly tailored, black-and-white tuxedo which takes the edge off the horrible pun. The rest of the show Evans sports a black suit in the blazing Florida heat. This is in stark contrast to the weather appropriate wardrobe choices of all the other men bringing  full meaning to the term “black sheep.”

Most complimenting to the costumes is the Miramar Playa Hotel. The set was built near the Miami International Airport and covers a 150,000 square foot area. An investment like that shows. The luxurious, neo-baroque hotel has a subterranean club, Atlantis  that shares a wall with the outdoor pool. Dead bodies will probably float by it on a bustling Saturday in future episodes, but for now  Evan and his playboy son get their best thinking done in there.  The lobby of the hotel  is fashioned with shiny creme marble, a robust chandelier, enormous black columns, and  an ornate “stairway to nowhere.” The show’s director, Mitch Glazer explained "The elevators would stop at the mezzanine floor, one floor above the lobby, and there was nothing up there but the manager's office—and the stairway...The women would get off on that level and then descend to their husbands. It was just for the theater of it."

Glazer was once a Cabana boy at a large Miami hotel, so the show is peppered with an inside look of how these places really operated. For instance, Evans points out a built-in sprayer in the lobby that mists out air perfumed of “ocean and new money,” and the hotel is kept cold so that woman must to wear their furs. Details like these have a feel of reality that only experience can give. 

Still this is a drama, not a trivia show. While interesting facts, glamorous costumes, real boobs, and a stunning lobby are eye-catching elements, they can only hold one’s attention for so long.  What really keeps a television show going is plot depth, character development, and quality acting. Magic City has not delivered much of these sustaining elements. If that doesn’t change, it will undoubtable join its unsuccessful predecessors in the dramatic period piece graveyard.