Back To Index Tales of the City
 Barnes & Noble Welcome to 28 Barbary Lane. You’ll want to stay a while. From the moment in 1976 when Cleveland ingénue MaryAnn Singleton (a then-unknown Laura Linney) settles into San Francisco’s quirkiest address, there’s no option but to be utterly drawn into all five hours of this vividly entertaining miniseries. Looking through MaryAnn’s eyes into the kaleidoscopic world of the five other Barbary tenants, we see not just an apartment complex that makes Melrose Place look like Sesame Street but a counterculture that bloomed between the Summer of Love and the winter of AIDS. Openly looking at homosexuality, rampant drug use, and sexual promiscuity, the six episodes intimately and honestly celebrate the eras experimentation while embracing the timeless human quests for love and identity. The cast brilliantly brings to life Armistead Maupin’s literary creations, born in his mid-70s San Francisco Chronicle columns and later collected in six Tales of the City books. The performances are uniformly good: Linney (You Can Count On Me) captures the time’s innocence lost; Chloe Webb embodies eccentricity as Mona Ramsey; and a divine Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck) is the series soul as the mysterious, motherly landlord, Mrs. Madrigal, taping homegrown "Welcome" joints above newcomers’ doors. (Also keep your eyes open for notable supporting players, such as Janeane Garofalo hanging out in a bar). Genuinely funny scenes and situations abound, but theres also a romantic charm and an inescapable sadness as the characters intertwined lives unfold. There are secrets, double-dealings, adultery, and death, yet things never devolve into soap opera. Whether it’s MaryAnn being seduced by her boss’s lecherous son (Thomas Gibson), Michael "Mouse" Tolliver (Paul Hopkins) trying to keep his homosexuality from his parents, or Mrs. Madrigal hiding her true identity, the emotion is real. You’ll be moved by this "family" as if it were your own. Peter Marchand Interested in the song lyrics? - Check out themostlyrics.com! Looking For A DVD? - Check out dvd-a-rama.com! |
|
|||||||
| �2006 CD-A-RAMA.com. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy • Contact Us |
||||||||
