Paff

Did anyone actually watch this?

It's been drilled into my head the last month or more during Sunday Night Football, and I do like some of the live theatrical productions that have been broadcast the last few years. I literally know nothing about Annie, never having seen any stage productions or the film versions. Just didn't seem my cup of tea. I mean, I've heard Tomorrow and It's a Hard Knock Life through osmosis, that's about it.

That said, while I didn't watch beginning to end, what I did see was really good, and I might have to catch it in its entirety on the inevitable rebroadcast in the next few weeks. The kids in the orphanage were amazing, I mean really professional. The choreography during Hard Knock Life was outstanding, with many of the kids doing full no-hands aerials.

Oh, and now I know where the song that Peter Griffin sang, This House is Freakin' Sweet, comes from.

davidh777

I forgot about it and will hope for a rebroadcast and hope it doesn’t go only to Peacock. Honestly I’ve seen Annie on stage and screen many many times, but a couple friends liked it so I’m interested.

Paff

Oof. Yeah. Forgot about Peacock. They definitely want to force people to sign up for that. I was thinking the positive reviews this show is getting (AV Club gave it an A, and they pretty much hate everything) might compel them to do a re-airing, but instead they'll be more incentivized to make subsequent viewings "Peacock-only"

Really hate the streaming services. Can't afford them all, so there will always be content I miss.

Sure seems the less I like a musical, the better the live broadcast of it is, and vice-versa. Grease is god-awful but Fox really knocked it out of the park with their live production. And somehow NBC was able to suck all the life out of Jesus Christ Superstar a few years back. Rocky Horror was dull as dishwater too. I'm guessing I should hope they don't do The Who's Tommy, American Idiot, or Spring Awakening (though the last one would be fun to see how they do a rendition of "Totally Fucked").

GuessWho

I thought this was one of the better TV productions. They didn't try to overly showbiz it up for TV and thus fuck it up in doing gimmicks. They stuck to the simple mission of presenting a Broadway show on TV and it worked.

JeffTheAlpaca

It led all non NFL programming in the ratings and did better than the Grinch last year.


https://tvline.com/2021/12/03/tv-rat...nnie-live-nbc/

Quatermass

I had recorded it so I could watch it over a few nights. I'm not a musical fan and I thought it was good, although I could not have done it all in one sitting. I haven't seen any other version of Annie, but my sister had the soundtrack album of the first movie when she was a kid, so some of the songs were familiar. Taraji P. Henson was a little too over-the-top. Harry Connick sounded off on one of his songs, like he was behind tempo or maybe slightly off-key, but I enjoyed it all. There was also a kind of behind-the-scenes shaky cam that was distracting every time they showed that, but it was only 2 or 3 times, so maybe it was a Live TV directorial flub.

dex14

Not all content on Peacock requires a paid subscription... not sure if this does. Just watch it On Demand via your cable provider if you don't have Peacock.

You can watch it on NBC.com or NBC app as well.

Paff

^ Good to know, I might have to watch the whole thing that way. By the way, here's the entire Hard Knock Life from the show:


Keep this performance in mind the next time some "musical artist" on SNL resorts to backing tracks and lip-synching. The steps here are 10x harder than anything I've seen popular acts do where they justify the lip-synching so they can "concentrate on the dancing."

windom

NBC will be showing this again on the 20th.

Paff

Finally had a chance to watch this beginning-to-end, and really dug it.

A lot of the other reviews complained about Harry Connick Jr's bad baldcap being a distraction, but for me his greatest offense (and he's a jazz musician, he's GOT to know better) was mispronouncing "New Orleans". I don't care if it was supposed to be in-character as Warbucks, it was live, he should have said it right.