Pan Am Season 1 Review

13th Mar 2013

Pan Am is one of the period television dramas which came along in the wave of the Mad Men phenomenon (another to mention is The Playboy Club). What set Mad Men apart from any of these other shows was that they were all cancelled pretty early on in their run, Pan Am included. Now this is not to say straight out that Pan Am is a bad show and should have been cancelled, there have been many a master piece that was taken off the air before it should have been (Firefly to name the most renowned in my opinion).

Pan Am follows the exploits of the Pan American World Airways pilots and flight attendants throughout 1963. Our lead characters are the shifty, bohemian Maggie (Christina Ricci), the charming but attracted to inappropriate men Collette (Karine Vanasse) and chalk and cheese sisters Laura (Margot Robbie) and Kate (Kelli Garner). The show follows their loves, losses and adventures along with the pilots Ted (Michael Mosley) and Dean (Mike Vogel).

Pan Am is visually lovely; costumes, hair, sets, location. It is all sumptuous and done with loving care and attention to details. If you do come to this show because you enjoyed Man Men be warned it is a kind of period drama light version. Everything is lit with a warm glow, nothing bad really happens and even if something bad happens it isn’t really so bad. There is a wonderful glossy shine over the whole show. One way of explaining this almost fluffy take on this era and circumstance is that the show is produced by an ex-Pan Am flight attendant and through brief snippets of interview on the extras with herself and other ex-Pan Am attendants you are given the idea that they look back on these days through rose tinted glasses, where everything was glamorous and wonderful.

This tinted view of 1963 could be why Pan Am didn’t necessarily hit the ratings and therefore get commissioned for more shows (it was cancelled just after mid-way through the season). Despite the bubble-gum sweetness of Pan Am there are some meaty issues and plot lines hidden in there. Admittedly what I think is a flaw of Pan Am is the attempts to create elaborate plotlines around espionage and spies, if handled differently it could have worked much better. The spy story aside there are some interesting historical events identified, particularly what people would have faced as the world had moved on the WWI and with the cold war paranoia. Racism, sexism and homosexuality are the obvious part of the era but also those children who were born in the late 1930s and early 1940s are adults now and as the world opened up their family history literally came to confront them. However Pan Am sticks to the fluffy light way of touching on these topics and almost seems to whizz past them as they make the era seem too ugly.

Pan Am isn’t a bad television series, it is an easy Sunday afternoon watch. It is however a bit disappointing when you think how much differently it could have been done. And like all shows that are cancelled too soon you are left hanging with a number of plot lines, things don’t always add up and some things are tied up too quickly.

One thing to mention about the first release of the discs is that Sony have not bothered to pay the care and attention they should have and episodes are out of order. Check online for these otherwise you’ll be jumping about with plotlines. A really shoddy way to release what should be a nice television disc.