If anyone somehow had any remaining notions about CBS being the “old people’s network,” as the cliche had it, those ideas will quickly dissipate with the premiere of Swingtown on June 5.
The series, airing Thursdays, is set in the Chicago suburbs in 1976, and follows several couples and their children as they experience and experiment with the changing mores and culture of the era, which, as the title suggests, includes activities such as “swinging.”
The cast includes Jack Davenport (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Molly Parker (Deadwood) as Bruce and Susan Miller, newcomers to the neighborhood who become increasingly intrigued with the very open lifestyle embraced by their neighbors Tom and Trina Decker (Grant Show and Lana Parrilla). The Millers’ former neighbors, Roger and Janet Thompson (Josh Hopkins and Miriam Shor) keep in touch with and visit their old friends, and while Janet is shocked — but perhaps faintly curious — over what she sees going on at the Deckers’ Bicentennial party, Roger seems to definitely have some interest.
While this could all easily turn into prurient and risque material, it doesn’t degenerate into mere titillation, concentrating instead on the emotional aspects of the situations, handled expertly in the pilot, from both the adults’ and the children’s perspectives, by director Alan Poul (who also worked on Big Love and Rome).
Star Miriam Shor agrees. “I guess it might be a little risque for regular network television,” she says, “but in this day and age they kind of have to compete with cable, don’t they? I think people are more interested in and talking about, water cooler-wise, the cable shows, and I think networks kind of have to compete with that. And actually, though the show is kind of risque in subject material, I think there’s also sort of a weirdly, in matching with the time, an innocence, an openness to it. I wouldn’t say it’s decadent! I wonder if it were on a cable network, if there wouldn’t be more pressure to sort of really delve into the sexual aspect of it and maybe lose some of the emotion because of that. You might sacrifice it.”
During our interview, it becomes immediately apparent that the very open and affable Shor, who is comfortable and making jokes right away, is nothing like her somewhat repressed character, making it an even more impressive acting accomplishment.
“I really like this character,” she says. “She’s very different from me. I was raised by very liberal parents, in a time when I felt free to make whatever choices I wanted. And I don’t feel like [Janet]’s that kind of woman. I feel that at that time in particular, women were going through a lot of changes, in their roles in the family, their roles in society. I think she came from this place where she was sort of told that, if she just followed the rules and did everything that a good wife and mother was supposed to do, that everything would be fine. And she might be finding out that that might not necessarily be true, that just because you follow the rules — what happens when the rules change? Is your world shaken up a little bit? That was a big moment in time when women realized we don’t have to follow the rules our mothers followed, but I think there were plenty of women who still felt that they did. So it was a very interesting and challenging time for them.”
It was a time Shor somewhat recalls, having been a young child throughout the decade, so some of the finer details of the ’70s brought to the show made her feel some nostalgia on occasion.
“When we were shooting the Fourth of July party [in the pilot], being there, it was like this bizarre time warp. Watching the kids just running around, throwing balloons. It would spark these memories of my childhood.”
The show is peppered with ’70s references, but as Shor correctly points out, it is “not super-self conscious” about doing so. People casually refer to everyday things of the time, such as the fact that one character is currently reading Jaws — which may not be so pleasant a memory for Shor.
“I remember my parents went to go see Jaws,” she laughs. “I was pissed. I remember knowing it was a scary movie about sharks, and wishing I could have gone with them but also being terrified about sharks. But I was so young. And then I was just like having nightmares about sharks for like three years without even seeing the movie!”
Of course, being so young at the time, Shor, like every child, was unaware of the bigger society about her. So there were plenty of things about the 1970s that she had to research.
“Because I was a child [then], and everything is so egocentric when you’re a kid (“not that I’m not egocentric now!” she jokes), I was also curious about [my character] because I didn’t know a lot of women like her, because my parents were pretty liberal. So I read a lot of women’s magazines from that era that I thought maybe [she] might read.
“I was really surprised at how innocent, and yet open, that era was. For instance, in Cosmopolitan, there was a segment about beauty regime, taking a bath — typical things. And there was a woman, showing you how to go through this beauty regime, and she was completely naked. And this was 1976. Now, you wouldn’t see a completely naked woman in a Cosmopolitan today. So, 32 years later we can’t show a naked woman in a woman’s magazine, [though] we all, at least women, know what a naked woman looks like, and it shouldn’t be shocking to us. We’re somehow more repressed. I didn’t quite realize this sort of dichotomy of raciness and repression that we have now.
“It was very eye-opening just reading these magazines. And some of these were just so hilarious! I remember one of them was talking about, ‘Is it cheating if my kid uses a calculator on his homework?’ and the guy was like, ‘Well, you know, in the future, kids will be using calculators all the time.’ It’s so innocent. And the other thing is, it’s so optimistic. We’re very cynical now. There was just an absence of cynicism, at least in the women’s magazines that I was reading. Please, my generation is a very cynical generation. And to not encounter that cynicism is sort of a breath of fresh air. So that was very interesting to me — to look at the ’70s from the perspective of an adult.”
And perhaps it’s a perspective we might want or need to take a new look back on. “I think we could put aside our cynicism a little bit,” says Shor. “I think we allow it to handicap us. We chop ourselves off at the legs before we even take a step. There was general curiosity [in the ’70s], and I think curiosity married with optimism is a good thing. Of course, a lot happened in the ’80s to tamp that down. So it’s fascinating to look at the ’70s knowing the ’80s are coming.”