'Nashville' gets back to its roots at CMT
Clare Bowen lost her job on her birthday.
It was May 12, 2016. The actress and musician — one of the many multitalented stars of “Nashville” — was waiting to find out if the TV show would be renewed for a fifth season on ABC. She and her co-workers spent the day waiting for a call that never came. Instead, she found out about the show’s fate just like their fans: through news reports on social media.
Four years after it first began filming in Music City, “Nashville” had been canceled.
“I was kind of looking to the universe and going, 'All right, what else you got?’ ” Bowen recalls with a laugh. “It could have been very sad, but for some reason, I never really got sad about it, because I didn't think it could possibly be the end.”
Luckily, she wasn’t the only one who refused to accept the outcome. “Nashville” fans rallied for weeks on social media to “Bring Back Nashville,” and an online petition garnered 174,000 signatures.
Four weeks later, “Nashville” had been saved. Cable network CMT and digital service Hulu picked up the rights to the show, and production resumed in September. Season five’s two-hour premiere airs Thursday night on CMT.
“It amazed us all that it worked,” cast member Sam Palladio says. “(The fans) had a voice, they were able to say their thing, and it made people second-guess (ending the show).”
The mission to “Bring Back Nashville,” however, might go deeper than just getting the show back on the air. Now that it’s free of ABC’s influence, there’s a pervading sense that “Nashville” is returning to its roots, and once again striking the tone it set in its pilot episode.
Back then, “Nashville” was shaping up to be a fairly realistic music business drama, with just a touch of political intrigue. Its strength was in its cast, sharp writing and a stellar soundtrack of original songs, penned by dozens of Nashville musicians.
But on prime-time network television, “Nashville” was surrounded by courtroom dramas and crime scene investigations, and there was pressure to deliver those same kinds of thrills. “Nashville” stayed true to its core, but along with great songs, viewers came to expect car crashes, suicides, assassination attempts and political cover-ups. It wasn’t a natural fit.
“We were on with ‘Scandal’ and ‘Revenge,’ and that was just the direction that everything was going on (ABC),” says Callie Khouri, the creator and co-executive producer of "Nashville."
“They very much loved that kind of storytelling. It was fun. It's always a challenge coming up with that kind of stuff and making it feel real. But it’s not my fastball.”
T Bone Burnett, the former music director of "Nashville," was blunt about that tension after leaving the show in 2013.
"Some people were making a drama about real musicians' lives, and some were making a soap opera, so there was that confusion,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a knock-down, bloody, drag-out fight, every episode.”
More room for music
The mood was lighter in September, when cast and crew gathered to read the first script of season five. According to Palladio, it didn’t take long for them to notice a difference in the writing.
“It feels like there’s more time within the stories to get into the details,” he says. “It’s not so fast. There’s less drama for the sake of drama, but better storytelling.”
Season five’s writing staff is almost entirely new, save for Khouri and one other writer. She says they’re staying away from “the ‘that would never happen’ stuff” in their new storylines. Once again, it sounds like the viewers were heard.
“They always would say, 'We just want to be with the characters. We want more Rayna and Deacon, we want more Scarlett and Gunnar.' … So it just kind of (led to thinking), 'We need to maybe not throw people off a building, and spend more time in the areas that our viewers love.'”
That charge also is being led by the new showrunner of "Nashville," Marshall Herskovitz. He has said his first mandate on “Nashville” was to make more room for original music. That’s a decision that sits well with the show’s new TV home, CMT.
The cable network is branching beyond country music videos and reality TV with a new emphasis on original scripted shows. Its first was the Billy Ray Cyrus sitcom vehicle “Still The King,” which debuted in the summer of 2015 2016 and will return for a second season later this year. The limited-run series “Sun Records” will join “Nashville” on CMT’s Thursday night lineup, starting February Feb. 23.
“Nashville” season five episodes air Thursdays at 8 p.m. CT on CMT, starting Jan. 5.
Reach Dave Paulson at 615-664-228 and on Twitter at @ItsDavePaulson.