When Martin Scorsese’s latest telly excursion dropped in February it did so in a fireball of hype. Executive produced by Mick Jagger and starring his son James! The first episode a two-hour extravaganza directed by Scorsese himself! Featuring a soundtrack of original jams and newly recorded covers by an array of musical maestros! Set amidst a backdrop of New York excess in the 70s! A cast of brilliant performers varying from Bobby Cannavale, Olivia Wilde and Juno Temple to Ray Romano and Andrew Dice Clay! It’s on HBO!

Except that the show only seemed to get lukewarm reviews. Now, not everything can be Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, but Vinyl is hardly True Detective either. This is a quality show with a number of flaws and one that’s probably suffering a little from the build-up it got and the excitement it gathered. Fair to say there are people who will love it and people who will hate it, though most of us are gonna fall apathetically into the middle and in such a crowded television landscape that’s not the safest place to be.

The shows that get the ratings are the ones that people don’t have to think about too much. TV is meant to be a lazy pursuit, right? So with all these options and only so many free hours in the day, people are gonna trend towards the shows that they’re told are great and they don’t have to worry about whether or not they’ll like it. Which is a shame in some ways, because challenging art is often the best art and if something really speaks to you then who gives a goddamn what everyone else thinks? Richie Finiestra sure doesn’t, he just wants to find something that’s REAL, man! Something that ROCKS! Something PURE!

Vinyl is probably not that show. It’s the story of a 1970s record label executive (with a drug addiction) as he rips up a contract of sale that would have netted him enough money to sail around the Bahamas in his own boat. But no way, dude, Richie Finiestra is all about the music. So after committing a very notable crime and sinking back into his narcotic dependency, he also happens to see the New York Dolls literally rock the house down and decides he can do something special with his struggling label. Meanwhile a host of employees, artists and his oppressed Warholian wife are notably affected and one clued-in secretary discovers the birth of punk rock… sort of. Look, the show is not for everybody but it certainly is for somebody. To decide whether that somebody is you or not, let’s run through the pros and cons.

CON: It’s Not Mad Men

This is a serious complaint. A good lot of the show takes place in Richie’s American Century Records offices, with catty secretaries, loud executives with personal motives and employees that range from sympathetic to just plain pathetic. Not to mention the period setting, which only makes it even more like a Mad Men contrivance. Jamie Vine is practically Peggy Olsen… if Peggy was also a pusher. It’s not like Mad Men owns the rights to any sort of period office setting, it’s just that nobody is ever going to do that better than Mad Men, which is unfair and unfortunate.

PRO: The Acting

Oh dude. Bobby Cannavale is such a ball of contagious energy, and if you saw him in Boardwalk Empire then you already know this but here he really gets to cut loose. This is such a great outlet for him to do all that he can, here’s an actor that carries a physical presence in every scene – whether snorting the white stuff or grovelling at a desk. He’s so good that he keeps his character fun and interesting even when he’s doing abhorrent things. Not many can do that. But this is far from a one-man play. Ray Romano is such an endearing sideman you find yourself cheering for him over Richie. Juno Temple is strong and shout out also to Susan Heyward as Cece, though it’d be nice if Olivia Wilde had more to do (as it goes on, she gets to open up more). Even James Jagger, not a pure actor by any means, does a fine job as Kip Stevens, The Future of Rock and Roll.

CON: Complicated Male Anti-Hero

You’ve heard that idea before haven’t you? Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood… basically every second great TV show (and a whole lotta terrible ones) of the past 15 years has been roughly centred on such a fella and Vinyl is no different. Richie Finiesta is a lapsed cocaine addict, he’s self-centred, he’s abrasive, he’s neglectful of his wife and he pretty much screws over his entire boardroom in the pilot. Oh, and that other thing he does, no spoilers. Not to mention the backstory of Lester Grimes. It’s not that any of those shows aren’t fantastic. Nor that this one can’t grow into such a title (nobody knew what to do with Breaking Bad until a few eps into the second season, remember). It’s just that coming after that whole wave does make it feel dated. As it happens, complicated male anti-heroes happen to be a Scorsese staple as well, so who were we to expect otherwise? To be fair, by midway in the season, Richie gets sooooo out of control that it becomes unsettling to watch. Which is pushing the boundaries, finally.

(Also, the show changes tones quite distinctly from the pilot to the rest of it as Scorsese hand the reins over. It’s probably an improvement.)

PRO: Great Music

Oh, mate. But the music. Obviously a show with this premise absolutely had to nail the music or else all credibility was gone down the dunny. So it’s a good thing that it does exactly that. We’ll get to the way they incorporate musicians in a sec, but just the music in general is wonderful. So well cultivated, every scene gets the appropriate song and they do a fine job of making sure the whole thing revolves around the tunes. From Richie busting through doors screaming “It’s all about the music” (not necessarily a real quote, but it might as well be) to how artists real and fake pop up in storylines. Clearly they’ve got people filtering things and that does mean a little revisionist history (THIS was cool and THIS was not!) but, hey, they don’t often stray far from the mark.

CON: There’s No Real Plot

Or at least no plot that really drives you onwards. Nothing you feel like investing in. When Richie cans the record deal, that’s when it should kick into gear but it’s always so focussed on his irrepressible presence that side characters aren’t getting the time they deserve (especially Ray Romano, the poor lad). As time goes by there’ll be more to see, though the show does suffer somewhat from a lack of peripheral focus. Jamie goes off with the Nasty Bits too often, Devon is isolated and when she isn’t (there aren’t that many major plot moments but there are a few) then she’s still in Richie’s shadow somehow. Romano’s guy is fun, Annie Parise’s Andrea Zito is real shot in the arm when she shows up midway in. There’s gravity to Lester as well. The worry is that there aren’t enough characters you wanna spend time with elsewise yet, the rest of them are mostly dickheads and enablers. When you aren’t asking people to watch for the next big twist then you’re asking them to watch to spend time with these folks in this atmosphere. So far that’s a negative.

PRO: We All Love a Period Drama

All that orange and beige, must be the 70s. The phones all have those springy leads on them, CDs and MP3s aren’t even on the horizon, the clothes are hideous, the drugs are free and easy. What a time. Maybe not to live in but to inhabit for an hour a week, sure. That’s the thing with these period shows, they may not be 100% accurate, but that ain’t the point. Let’s be honest, this show… okay it probably would have been picked up on the sole basis of Scorsese/Jagger regardless of the premise but it’s main selling point was that it was set in the 70s at a tipping point of popular culture. Awesome. Sold. We didn’t get to see it when we happened so watching it on telly is the next best thing.

CON: Artist Portrayals

This could also be a positive, depending on your position. Vinyl has artists like David Bowie and Alice Cooper, for example, portrayed by actors, taking part in proceedings and all that. They also have them simply playing on stage, Lou Reed and the Velvets get such a deal. Then there are the smokey interludes of the likes of Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Ruth Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly… the list goes on. Just them, playing one of their tunes. Bo Diddley showed up playing by the pool after Richie had been gifted an authentic Diddley Bow guitar. Jerry Lee Lewis thumping his way through ‘Breathless’, Ruth Brown and her tambourine in Richie’s office. Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean. It’s pretty cool, these almost hallucinatory apparitions. But the people playing them are never fully convincing if you’re at all familiar with the originals. From the lip synching to the look of them, there’s always something off and that goes for every type of artist portrayal. Bowie’s accent was wrong (the British usually do perfect American accents, the reverse is not true). It’s just… odd. There’s no way to do it flawlessly without a time machine so fair enough. But, like, odd.

PRO: Glorious Excess

One thing you can’t say about Vinyl is that it holds back. No it does not, it goes full throttle for what it’s aiming at and if that’s a compromise for subtlety then, well, so be it. It has to be, you can’t really do a refined take of an era that’s supposed to be a rangy mess. Hell yeah the drugs are everywhere. Hell yeah they go all the way with some of the, ahem, less realistic plots (ep #6 has a doozy). It’s all or nothing and that’s the risk that Richie is taking with his label makeover. Either he’s a genius or the world’s biggest idiot and he’s unwillingly (for them) taking a large selection of people with him. Those are stakes, good for the show that they own it. Although it’s been so surreal that nobody wants to call him on his absolute BS. Again, poor Ray Romano.

CON: Overly Indulgent Nostalgia

Here’s the thing: this is not strictly 1970s New York. This is Scorsese’s 1970s New York, HBO’s 1970s New York, Richie Finiestra’s 1970s New York. It’s that revisionist history theory again, they put in the things that they want to remember it by and ignore the stuff that they don’t. And when it’s being made by people who were actually there then clearly they’re gonna have their rose-tinted glasses on, just ask anyone from the pre-internet era and they’ll tell you that the greatest music of all time was recorded when they were between the ages of 16 and 25. Vinyl definitely has that going against it, it’s more a matter of whether we wanna live with that or not. This isn’t a history lesson.

PRO: The Soundtracks

Before each episode they release what is an EP’s worth of new songs, recorded specifically for the episode. We’re talking covers of time-appropriate songs by new and classic artists as well as originals both beloved and forgotten. Plus a full length soundtrack for the premiere. Honestly, we’ve already mentioned how good the music is and you get that in full focus when you listen to the releases. Get ‘em on iTunes, by the way. Even if the show was an absolute dud then it’d still have graced us with some jams we never even knew we needed. Like episode six, for example, which includes a cover of David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ by Trey Songz of all people. Or David Johansen redoing Personality Crisis. Or Julian Casablancas doing a couple Velvet Underground tunes. Or the Nasty Bits tracks. It’s all solid stuff. Hey and Sturgill Simpson’s theme tune is a real banger.