Entertainment

Do good intentions count? Should they? That can be a tricky question in real life, where you have to judge along a sliding scale of contingencies. But when it comes to entertainment, it's simple – right?

Something is good or it isn't, entertaining or not. Who cares if it is intended to teach us an important lesson, or tries to do something fresh, new, different? If it doesn't work, it's still a mess. The road to good intentions is paved with boring movies and awful TV shows.

This brings us to Viva Laughlin, a new musical drama from CBS about an aspiring empire builder (Ripley Holden, played by Lloyd Owen) trying to open a casino in the small Nevada town of Laughlin. That's right, it's a musical drama, so periodically during this show's one-hour unspooling of soap-opera storylines, characters will break into song (and dance).

But just because Hugh Jackman is one of the stars, don't expect Broadway-style production numbers. Viva Laughlin is more like a karaoke musical with the stars singing along to a famous pop hit.

The show, which premieres at 9 tonight before switching to its regular 7 p.m. Sunday night slot, opens with Ripley cruising to his under-construction casino, singing along with Elvis on the radio. But when he pops out of his car and strides through the half-built hall, "Viva Las Vegas" is still playing and he's still singing and soon enough he's hopped onto a blackjack table and he's dancing.

It's a gambit that's repeated with Mr. Jackman's introduction as the slick, scheming casino baron, Nicky Fontana, dancing with showgirls as he sings along with Mick belting out "Sympathy for the Devil." A little later, it's Melanie Griffith's turn as the seductive, soon-to-be widow, wriggling around Ripley as she sings along with Blondie's "One Way or Another." The final kicker comes with Ripley putting all his money (and, of course, his dreams) on red at the roulette wheel and letting it ride as he sings along to – can you guess? – Bachman Turner Overdrive's "Let It Ride."

That's a lot of songs and stars to squeeze into one hour (40 minutes, really) of television, and it's hard to imagine the series maintaining the breathless pace of its pilot. Sure enough, Mr. Jackman will appear only intermittently – so don't count on seeing the evil Nicky (J.R. recast as a lounge lizard) strutting his stuff week after week.

So what to make of this strange, surreal extravaganza? Maybe the series will find its proper tone and timing as it develops – if it has a chance – but in the pilot, the musical numbers feel crowbarred into the story rather than rising out of the intensity of the moment.

As is often the case in musicals, the songs occur at moments that would otherwise be filled with dialogue, which is good in this case because when there is dialogue in Viva Laughlin, it's laugh-out-loud dreadful. Take a scene in the supermarket between Ripley's long- suffering­but­who­knows-why-exactly wife and this so-suave-you-want-to-punch-him-in-the-face police detective. It's so over-the-top bad (like something out of an old radio melodrama) you wonder if it was intended to be, but then you realize it doesn't matter, because either way, it is.

Viva Laughlin may be trying to be daring and different. But people don't watch intentions. They watch shows. And this one is pretty bad. Viva Laughlin

D Tonight at 9 on CBS (Channel 11). 1 hr.

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