Brilhantina returns to Rydell High

The planet grease continues expanding, this time into the past. The new Paramount series, which will premiere in Portugal on SkyShowtime, tells the origin story of the Pink Ladies, the group of teenagers who in the film allied with the T-Birds, exclusively for boys, to destabilize the Californian Lyceum of Rydell. With a lot of singing and dancing in the middle, the new series is a musical like the original, adding new themes to each episode, in a new trip to the 50s of the last century, when women were supposed to be in the kitchen. But the Pink Ladies fought to change the status quo and the new series tells us about feminism, as well as class struggle, racism, bullying or personal overcoming, issues that are on the agenda, more than ever.

Rizzo, Frenchie, Marty and Jan. That’s the name of the Pink Ladies gang from the movie brilliantine (1978), played by actresses Stockard Channing, Didi Conn, Dinah Manoff and Jamie Donnelly. Names that did not reach the stardom of the protagonists of the popular feature film: John Travolta, in the role of Danny, and Olivia Newton-John, the Sandy of his heart. Many also know the classic of American cinema as greasethe original name, which was so baptized for focusing on the so-called greasersa working-class youth subculture of 1950s America embraced by many Italian or Latin Americans of the time. grease – adapted from a musical premiered in 1971, in Chicago, before heading to Broadway – is represented by the T-Birds, of which Danny was a part. But now the protagonism is all of the women, who take the reins of the new Paramount production, which tells the story of the birth of the female group at Rydell High School, four years before the 1978 film. -film in 1982, sequel played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield.

Grease: The Rise of The Pink Ladies, a musical romantic comedy, with some drama in the mix, also starts with a summer love, this time between Jane (Marisa Davila), an exemplary and studious girl whose family moves from New York to Los Angeles, and Buddy (Jason Schmidt), the most popular boy at school, where he leads the football team. Even assuming that they are dating when school starts, Jane – the daughter of an Italian man and a Puerto Rican woman – finds it difficult to integrate into the popular group. The same happens with other characters who are looking for her path: Olivia (Cheyenne Isabel Wells), a Mexican in love with literature who is involved with a professor; eccentric Japanese-American fashionista Nancy (Tricia Fukuhara) and Cynthia (Ari Notartomaso), a queer teenager who dreams of joining the T-Birds. There are also adults in the cast, especially veteran Jackie Hoffman (Homicides at Home, Glass Onion), in the role of McGee, the assistant principal of the high school.

With an argument from showrunner Annabel Oakes – who signed and directed episodes of the series atypical and integrated the technical sheet of the series minx, Transparent It is Awkwardas a screenwriter and producer – the aesthetics of Grease: The Rise of The Pink Ladies it’s colourful, in keeping with the season, and the wardrobe (which will possibly have some nominations in the next television awards season) does not go unnoticed, thanks to the talent of Angelina Kekich (The Stand) and Samantha Hawkins (The Tick).

And the soundtrack? In the 1978 film, some of the themes are reused from the musical (“Greased Lightnin”; “Summer Nights”) and others are original (“You’re the One That I Want”, “We Go Together” and “Hopelessly Devoted to You ”, with the latter getting an Oscar nomination). among others, while the choreographies accompanying the songs were designed by Jamal Sims, a well-known face of fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Sims also choreographed the dance moves for all five films. step up and even the remake of the classic Footloose (1984), a feature film released in 2011 that fell far short of the success achieved by the original film.

contrary to grease from the 1970s, whose filming took place in several secondary schools in Los Angeles, this series was filmed at the Vancouver Technical Secondary School, in Canada, which has already served as the setting for other productions – from the series smallville, iZombie or Supernaturalto the movie Scary Movie. But nothing is noticeable. After all, this will be the backdrop for yet another journey through time, towards Rydell High School in the 1950s.

SkyShowtime. Premiere on April 7 (T1)

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