A few years ago, writer Melissa London Hilfers was having lunch with her friend Gail Berman, a TV and movie producer. Berman mentioned that Fox was looking into doing a dramatic series based in the country music world.
Hilfers lit up. She had grown up in a big Maryland family that liked to jam in the living room with friends, her dad leading the way on guitar. As she recalled in a recent interview, she had a flash: "What if we reimagined the Romanov dynasty as a family of country music stars in Austin, Texas?" Berman liked the pitch.
Hilfers' idea has since evolved into the new Fox drama "Monarch," premiering Sunday. The Romanov dynasty has been replaced by the Roman family, a bickering, spiteful bunch that clings to its reputation as the first family of country music and leaves a trail of corpses in its wake.
Atop the Roman family sits the matriarch, Dottie (Susan Sarandon), an emotionally manipulative superstar whose health is waning. Dottie would like to see her eldest daughter, Nicky (Anna Friel), the narrative heart of the series, inherit the crown. But Nicky's little sister, Gigi (Beth Ditto), long consigned to the shadows by her mother, is now primed for a power move.
Their brother, Luke (Joshua Sasse), runs the Monarch label — and is sleeping with Gigi's wife, Kayla (Meagan Holder). Meanwhile, the father, Albie (played by the towering, baritone-voiced country star Trace Adkins), just wants to drink whiskey, record classic outlaw country songs, browbeat his corporate-minded son and cover up the murder that he or someone close to him seems to have committed.
It's a busy family, and a busy show — "a good page-turner," as Sarandon put it in a recent call. Or, as the country music veteran Adkins described it in a separate conversation, "There has to be drama all the time."
"I like zero drama myself," he added. He sounded a little like Albie, who would really rather just play music.
To stand a chance, a country series must do well by the music, and Adkins was a key element in pulling that off. He is a bridge between the outlaw tradition of artists like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and the more pop-flavored style that has racked up so much radio play in recent years.
