They say that ” Smash” is like “Glee” for grown-ups. It’s actually better than that. My interest was piqued by the frequent promos, which inexplicably say “introducing Katharine McPhee.” She was on “American Idol” six years ago.
The series debuts the day after the Super Bowl but NBC has made the pilot episode available three weeks early via several methods including Xfinity On Demand and Amazon Instant Video.
“Smash” tells the story of a Broadway musical being created. The show-within-a-show is a musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe. It only took a few minutes of the pilot to get me hooked. McPhee’s character is competing with another girl for the role of Marilyn. I especially loved the baseball number, in which Marilyn sings and dances with Joe DiMaggio’s teammates.
Jack Davenport plays the director of the musical. I always enjoyed watching him on the British version of “Coupling.” There are a couple of other recognizable faces in the cast including Debra Messing as one of the writers and Anjelica Huston as the producer.
When Katharine McPhee was on “American Idol,” my family and I were interested to know that she had attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks. Several of my daughter’s elementary school classmates went to Notre Dame and she considered going there herself before choosing a different school.
