Women fight for change at a weekly news magazine in 1969.
Amazon’s Fall 2015 “Pilot Season” is underway in the US, UK, and Germany. The way it works is that those with Prime memberships can stream a handful of new pilots for free, and the ones that wind up getting the best audience feedback have a chance of getting a first season pick up. Past pilots that have been picked up for series include Transparent, Bosch, The Man in the High Castle, Red Oaks, Sneaky Pete, and Mad Dogs. You can check out the current Pilot Season episodes here.
As sort of a spiritual successor to Mad Men, Amazon Studios’ Good Girls Revolt looks at the gender imbalance in news culture in the ’60s and ’70s, and follows a group of female researchers working at “News of the Week” magazine. While the characters and publication are fictitious, the series is loosely based on Lynn Povich’s book of the same name, about how the women of Newsweek sued their bosses for gender discrimination in the first lawsuit of its kind.
Good Girls Revolt also begins with the Altamont Free Concert in 1969, best known for the death of Meredith Hunter and several others. From there, we meet Nora Ephron (played by Meryl Streep’s daughter Grace Gummer), who arrives for her first day at News of the Week just as this story breaks. However, that’s about where the historical similarities end. The main focus is on three young women, Patti Robinson (House of Lies’ Genevieve Angelson), Jane Hollander (True Blood’s Anna Camp) and Cindy Reston (Young Adult’s Erin Darke), who all work under their male colleagues in dated subordinate roles at the magazine. But it isn’t until Patti lands her first-ever lead on the Altamont story that she and the other girls begin to challenge the modus operandi of their sexist workplace.
Anna Camp, Erin Darke and Genevieve Angelson in Good Girls Revolt
Right off the bat, the characterization here is very strong. Angelson, for example, shines in the role of Patti, whose free-loving but scrappy tendencies clash well with the rest of the characters. Camp, on the other hand, is a perfect fit for Patti’s uppity rival Jane, who reluctantly agrees to join forces with Patti when they net a major scoop. Then there’s Cindy, the most inexperienced of the bunch, who’s dealing with a pregnancy scare that could lose her her job. Meanwhile, Nora isn’t so much the audience surrogate as she is the “divine help” for the rest of the girls, nudging them to push the envelope. As a result, Nora gets sidelined for most of the episode, but her own big moment, towards the end, is what really clinches this pilot and, ultimately, signals the revolt to come.
The guy characters are also fine, though not as well-drawn as the women. Chris Diamantopoulos (Silicon Valley) is probably the standout as editor-in-chief Evan “Finn” Woodhouse, while Jim Belushi (According to Jim) and Hunter Parrish (Weeds) assume necessary but rather uninteresting roles as the magazine owner and Patti’s reporter, respectively.
As for the story, the pilot delivers an engaging first hour, with plenty of visual style and well-placed song cues to keep things interesting. (Both Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” and The Zombies’ “Time of the Season” come in at perfect times.) The gender commentary is also good, though it’s better in practice than when the characters are flat-out just talking about it. The dialogue can be a little heavy-handed at times, but overall it does a good job of showing rather than telling. (For example, the women are relegated to working in the “pit,” which is literally on a lower level, next to the men’s elevated workspace.) And the characters are refined enough that some of the shoehorned-in ’60s references can be forgiven.
Amazon Studios’ Good Girls Revolt is definitely worth checking out, if not for the groovy period elements then the appealing characters. Angelson, Camp, Darke and Gummer in particular offer great performances and play really well off each other. While some of the “steamier” subplots don’t quite resonate, the main storyline involving the Altamont Free Concert of 1969 is consistently entertaining. While not perfect, Good Girls Revolt is off to a solid start and could prove formidable down the line — if it gets a series pickup, of course.
