While the cast and characters themselves of “The Get Down” are diverse, featuring African-American and Hispanic, the storylines they bring along with them are incredibly relatable: a disgraced drifter who’s still a little wide-eyed about the possibilities of the world, a young girl seeking escape from her extremely religious parents, nerdy teenagers, and a charming sociopathic political animal.
Critics have lauded Season 1 of “The Get Down” as a very good depiction of the Bronx in 1977 which they described as both messy and wonderful.
In the Bronx of 1977, the neighborhoods are so criminally neglected that they resemble a war zone, so romance and beauty feel a lot less hackneyed in the hands of the abandoned kids of New York City.
The word ‘get down’ in the TV series is the term for the sections of songs that are better than everything that surrounds them.
“The Get Down” may be a hackneyed metaphor for life. But Luhrmann is a master of gussied-up shlock, as his “Red Curtain” film trilogy attests.
The TV series is a beautiful mess, a flawed show interspersed with moments of remarkable brilliance. It was unprecedentedly expensive and time-consuming for parent company Netflix; the result of which is a half-baked creative ambition that seems to have gone off the grid.