There’s a clear business calculation to a certain segment of streaming television, particularly since newer platforms struck out against Netflix: dust off something from the content library (as HBO is reportedly, and regrettably, considering with the Harry Potter movies); stretch the premise before or after or through a side character, or simply reboot; and fill anywhere from six to 10 episodes.
Such is the formula that gives us such tepid IP-based shows as Hulu’s How I Met Your Father, HBO Max’s new Gossip Girl, Netflix’s Cobra Kai and, more successfully, Disney’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. The 1978 teen classic Grease has undeniable nostalgic appeal and generations of musical theater familiarity. Hence, Grease: The Rise of the Pink Ladies, a new Paramount+ prequel series whose charms – a generally winsome cast, relentless energy, a steadfast appreciation of female friendship – get lost in subpar musical numbers and standard-grade streaming TV bloat.
By that I mean the common and frustrating tendency to run too long – there are 10 50-plus minute episodes (five of which were made available for review) when half that would do – and a bent toward excess specific to its musical theater ambitions. There’s a lot of too vigorous choreography, some cringe-y and underbaked imaginary sequences, and several forgettable songs per episode (pop songwriter Justin Tranter composed about 30 original numbers for the show).
Rise of the Pink Ladies, created by Annabel Oakes (a writer/director on Atypical and writer/producer on Minx, Awkward and Transparent), does at least get to the premise quickly enough: it’s 1954, four years before the events of Grease, and there’s a burgeoning popularity war at Rydell high school. (Vancouver, the filming locale of many a teen show, is unconvincingly standing in for somewhere in California; the original Rydell was in Venice Beach.) Good-girl Jane Facciano (Marisa Davila), the daughter of a half-Italian father and Puerto Rican mother, older sister to one middle school-age Frenchy and recently moved from New York, is going steady with golden boy Buddy Aldridge (Jason Schmidt); both have aspirations to run for student council and president, respectively.
That doesn’t last for long, thanks to the evergreen rumor mill. Following an ambitiously scaled and strenuously choreographed remake of Grease is the Word, Jane and Buddy are spotted in the back of a car. He brags and is fine, she’s branded an unelectable slut. Through a crisis of conscience and fury, Jane runs for office anyway, and in the process brings together a crew of misfits. There’s defiant, Rizzo-esque Olivia Valdovino (Cheyenne Isabel Wells), blacklisted for a rumored affair with her English teacher (Chris McNally), a troubling storyline the show doesn’t seem to know how to handle; single-handed fashionista Nancy Nakagawa (Tricia Fukuhara), ditched by her boy-obsessed best friends; and hammy tomboy Cynthia Zdunowski (Ari Notartomaso), desperate for admittance into the T-bird gang of Mexican-American/Jewish greasers led by Olivia’s brother Richie (Johnathan Nieves).
In this prequel, the T-birds and soon-to-be Pink Ladies are upstarts and outcasts, defining a more explicitly inclusive and loose Rydell against the white, straight, country-club preps of Buddy and his sharkish cheerleader ex Susan (Madison Thompson). It’s a lot of boys v girls talk, surface-level racial and gender politics, primary color moral dilemmas and campy riffs on 50s iconography (the second episode opens with a somewhat catchy number hyperbolizing stereotypes of the stifled housewife). Which is enjoyable enough as a teen comedy with a deep roster of endearingly performed characters. (Even members of the prep clique are likable, especially Buddy, who is almost too painfully good-hearted and conscience-stricken to believe, especially as he befriends his shy, bookish neighbor Hazel (Shanel Bailey), one of the few Black students at Rydell.)
It works less well as a musical. There’s an off-putting glossiness to the numbers, all musical theater-adjacent with a pop flavor, and mostly under-enunciated and over-tuned. It’s difficult to tell any of the voices apart, nor some of what they’re singing (particularly Jane). All filmed musicals are lip-synced, of course, but it’s a little too obvious here, as if the music was shellacked on rather than worked in.
Still, it’s not an overall whiff, even for the clear nostalgia-bait. Oakes injects a lot of low-stakes, lighthearted fun to the proceedings, such as a whimsical rotating camera for a game of spin the bottle. There’s pure visual pleasure that comes from exaggerated high school scenes and flashes of confidence, as when the Pink Ladies are in formation and in strut. But that’s minutes in an hours-long series. I like the original Grease well enough, but it’s hard to imagine anyone but the most ardent fans sticking around for that long.
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies is available on Paramount+ now
