SPECIAL PREMIERE: I described the contents of this planned NBC live musical telecast – something the network has been doing for several years now –
yesterday on the YouTube video for TV Worth Watching’s Best TV Tomorrow. I prefaced it with a Spoiler Alert, because it gave some specifics about the supposed plot points, and topical updates, of this new version of the family musical
Peter Pan. NBC first presented a live production of
Peter Pan in 1955, when the network’s
Producer’s Showcase televised a live version of the 1954 Broadway production, starring Mary Martin in the title role – in color! The same network and show reunited to televise another live version in 1956, and NBC, by itself, showcased Mary Martin and company in a third version in 1960. That
Peter Pan from NBC is the one that was recorded on the relatively new invention of videotape, and which has survived for posterity. It’s also the one that was recorded in my diary – that’s the absolute truth – in December 1960, when I was seven years old, as what was one of the first in a long, long line of my TV reviews. “Was PETER PAN good today!,” I wrote then. Much more recently, as part of its current string of live TV musicals, NBC staged a new version of
Peter Pan in 2014 called
Peter Pan Live!, starring Allison Williams from
Girls as Peter, and Christopher Walken as Captain Hook. (Again, that’s the absolute truth.) And tonight, NBC extends the tradition with a bold new live production featuring not only new music, but a new, uncomfortably relatable set of subplots. Captain Hook lost a hand, in turns out, by not sufficiently washing his. The Lost Boys wander around Neverneverland in single file, separated by a safe social distance. And Tinkerbell is no longer a good, impish sprite. Instead of spreading fairy dust that makes you fly, she spreads the coronavirus, as a sort of evil Typhoid Fairy. Alison Pill stars as Peter Pan, with Pee-Wee Herman as Captain Hook and Billie Eilish as Tinkerbell.