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The Playboy Club: Created by Chad Hodge. With Eddie Cibrian, Laura Benanti, Amber Heard, Jenna Dewan. Centers on the Bunnies and patrons of the original Playboy Club in 1960s Chicago.
- (5.9K)
- 2011-09-19
- Crime, Drama
- 60
- Cast and Characters
- Production
- Broadcast
- Reception
Main
1. Eddie Cibrian as Nick Dalton, a smooth high-powered attorney and Playboy Club key-holder who plans to run for state's attorney, but also harbors secret connections to organized crime. Jeff Hephner was originally cast in the role after performing well in test auditions, but the actor had no experience playing a television lead before, and the producers decided to let him go after the full cast table. Cibrian, who was cast just a few days before filming began, commuted from his Los Angelesho...
Guest
1. Sean Maher as Sean Beasley, a closeted gay man in a lavender marriage with Alice. A secret member of the Mattachine Society, Sean is also a political campaigner who was to serve as Nick's campaign manager during a state's attorney run in later episodes. Maher was closetedbefore taking the role and he publicly came out as the show aired because he felt the series was a good platform to openly discuss his sexuality and encourage public discourse about the issue. 2. Troy Garityas John Bianchi...
Development
20th Century Fox Television and Imagine Television had previously attempted to produce the concept of the series during the 2010–11 television season but the project never came to fruition. After that initial attempt, the companies approached screenwriter Chad Hodge, who became the show's creator and an executive producer. Imagine co-founder Brian Grazer and president Francie Calfo also served as executive producers, as did Richard Rosenzweig, a longtime executive and consultant with Playboy...
Writing
Chad Hodge said of writing the series, "When I set out to create this show, the first word out of my mouth was 'entertaining'", and cited as influences such films as All That Jazz (1979), Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Chicago (2002), and the comedy-drama television series Desperate Housewives. The characters and setting of The Playboy Club served as an exploration of the changing political and moral attitudes of the 1960s, particularly with the approach of the sexual revolutionthat began in that d...
Filming
The Playboy Club was shot in Chicago, the same city where the story was set. Filming on the pilot episode began on March 15, 2011, with most scenes filmed on a set at Cinespace Studios on West 16th Street. Some scenes were also shot at the former Meigs Field on Northerly Island. The Chicago Film Office estimated the production would add jobs to the city and pump an estimated $2 million into the local economy per episode. Each episode was shot in about nine days, and filming lasted for 12 hour...
The Playboy Club aired in the United States on NBC from September 19 to October 3, 2011. The series also aired in Canada on the Citytv network, airing on the same night as the NBC telecast, but the scheduling varied as the Citytv outlets in Calgary and Edmonton aired it at 8 p.m., while Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg followed NBC's 10 p.m. pattern...
Protests
The conservative advocacy group Parents Television Council (PTC) began protesting The Playboy Club and calling for boycotts against it immediately after NBC picked it up, long before the series debuted. They called it a "blatant attempt to obliterate any remaining standards of broadcast decency", and criticized the idea of a series with Playboy in the title at all. The group claimed the show objectified and degraded women, advanced an anti-family agenda and helped mainstream the pornography i...
Critical response
The Hollywood Reporter called The Playboy Clubone of the 12 most anticipated television shows of the season. In a review of the pilot episode, NPR writer Linda Holmes challenged the show's assertions of female empowerment. Finding the episode itself "silly and full of bad dialogue ... cheesy more than offensive", Holmes questioned how a series about women whose conduct and appearance were micromanaged could simultaneously claim that those regimented women were uniformly empowered by the exper...
Ratings
The series premiere of The Playboy Club drew an estimated 5.02 million household viewers in its original American broadcast on September 19, 2011, according to Nielsen Media Research. That was the lowest viewership among the major networks in the 10 p.m. timeslot, with the ABC police comedy drama Castle drawing 13.28 million households and the CBS police drama Hawaii Five-0 drawing 12.19 million households. The episode gradually shed viewers from the first half to the next, with an average of...
- 7 (4 unaired)
- September 19 –, October 3, 2011
- 1
- NBC
The Playboy Club was initially a chain of nightclubs and resorts owned and operated by Playboy Enterprises. The first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in 1960. Each club generally featured a Living Room, a Playmate Bar, a Dining Room, and a Club Room. Members and their guests were served food and drinks by Playboy Bunnies, some of whom were ...
- United States
- Hugh Hefner
- February 29, 1960; 63 years ago, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
- Nightclubs
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2011 -2011. 1 Season. NBC. Drama. TV14. Watchlist. Period drama set in 1960s Chicago, following the lives of Playboy Bunnies and high-powered patrons at the legendary Playboy Club. Streaming. Airings.
- (28)
- 1
- TV14
May 16, 2011 · This provocative new series captures a time and place that challenged the social mores, where a visionary created an empire, and an icon changed American cul...
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