"The Get Down" on Netflix

”In 1977 New York City, the talented and soulful youth of the South Bronx chase dreams and breakneck beats to transform music history.

The Get Down is an upcoming musical drama television series created by Baz Luhrmann and Stephen Adly Guirgis that is slated to debut in 2016 on Netflix. The first season will be twelve 1-hour episodes in length and will be produced by Sony Pictures Television. The first six episodes of the series will premiere on August 12, 2016.” (Wiki)

The marquee name for me here is “Baz Luhrmann” (director of “Strictly Ballroom”, “Romeo + Juliet”, “Moulin Rouge”), who created this series and is executive producing it. Coupled with the eternally topical heritage of “hip hop”, and mixed in with the fading notion of ensemble group musical shows on television (I’m looking at you, “Glee”), and I hope to savour the series on Netflix, even of only for the tunes from the truly good ol’days … THE GET DOWN launches August 12th, 2016.

Scroll down for some impressions from websites, stills, and more video promos and interviews.

"What a spectacular mixed bag The Get Down is. This afros-and-wide-lapels street fable from Baz Luhrmann and Stephen Adly Guirgis might be to current American television what 1941, Apocalypse Now, and Heaven's Gate were to American film in the 1970s and '80s: overscaled and wildly self-indulgent but still thrilling, imaginative, and personal; the kind of oddity that young critics reclaim as a lost masterwork a few years after it's faded from public view, and that websites like this will celebrate with oral histories." (Wrote Matt Zoller Seitz for Vulture)

"This is a powerful story, and one that is deeply culturally significant, but The Get Down doesn’t start to come together and tell it particular well for several episodes. Using fun flourishes like magic realism to feed into the era’s kung fu obsession, and allowing the visuals to match the bombastic sounds of punk and disco doesn’t work until you’ve established an actual story. And more than that, until you’ve established a real connection to the characters. As a result, the first episode is nothing but sound and fury." (Wrote Allison Keene for Collider)