Before long, the new TV season will be entering American living rooms with the usual staples of TV each season; the old stand sitcoms, the forever-hot copy and detective stories, and a few of the favorite psycho-dramas TV watchers have come to love and enjoy!
The new season – like every new season – has a few “newbies” to entertain the public, including a “looking back” kind of drama about the opulent, and somewhat sexist world of the ultimate gentlemen’s club of the 60s – The Playboy Club !
TV Guide.com reports on the new series that is set in the 60s and promises to be told as it was back in the day when lonely and unconfident girls who “had it goin’ on” were hired as waitresses to serve drinks and entertain mostly the male population.
The producers of the show are confident that the series is family friendly and mild compared to a lot of so-called “family” shows on TV today. They claim the intent of this show is to portray the characters as they were in the 60s as up-and-coming, ambitious men and women trying to become something of worth.
Even before the show has aired, concerns are being voiced by certain Parents’ Watchdog organizations that the show is not family friendly and are questioning the appropriateness of such a show being aired in primetime TV. Some affiliates of NBC could drop the show, such as Salt Lake City’s KSL. It will be aired however in that market by a local TV affiliate (KMYU) instead.
But the producers say it’s family-friendly. “In terms of content and anything racy, it’s mild compared to a lot of stuff on TV,” Biderman said. “The intent of this show is to show characters at a certain time and a certain place trying to become something… It’s not based on magazines, it’s based on the Playboy Club.”
Cast members say that the possibility of becoming a Playboy Bunny in the 60s was looked at in a different way then and not as a degradation of a woman’s sexuality or any other aspect of a woman’s self-respect. Amber Heard, who plays Bunny “Maureen”, is quoted as saying; “This is about choice, ultimately, it’s a different generation with different opportunities and different expectations for women. It’s just as chauvinistic to deny a woman her sexuality. Every woman up here is an independent, self-sufficient intelligent woman… representing a group of women who were doing the same in a time where options were completely different.”
“The show is about fantasy; it’s about what Hugh Hefner built… and at the end of the day, it’s about these women,” Biederman said. “The first thing Hugh Hefner said when we made this show is, ‘It’s about the bunnies; it’s about the girls. None of the other stuff matters. These aren’t Playmates; these are Bunnies… these were great, bright women who wanted to become something and I helped give them an opportunity, but really they did it themselves.'”
In the end, the TV watching public will make the ultimate decision about the credibility, the quality, and the level of entertainment presented by this series. The Playboy Club premieres Monday, Sept. 19 at 10/9c on NBC.
