Robert at Atlantic Crossings ("Between the Hudson Highlands and the South of England…") makes some excellent points about the new TV lineup this Fall.
Money quote(s):
" “Pan Am” struck a personal chord: my first international flight (a lot more, ahem, recently than 1963!) was on Pan Am.
But “Pan Am” sparked my interest not only owing to that. Pan Am was murdered by terrorists; and its memory since has been stolen by that terrorism. So in a wider sense it is damn well about time we were all reminded the real Pan Am was not only about Lockerbie.
For just as the life of any murder victim is NOT — and absolutely should NOT be — only about his or her murder, Pan Am had had quite a “life” before 1988; and that deserves to be remembered too. That existence stretched back to an era that is recalled fondly as constituting a “golden era” in international flight."
CAA is of an age to not only have experienced (as a child) some of what it was like when there truly was a certain "glamour" to air travel but to have witnessed first-hand (as an airline employee) what it was like when deregulation (among other depredations, like Texas Air and Frank Lorenzo) began the not-so-slow destruction of America's flagship passenger carriers.
Present-day consular officers will already be aware of how the Lockerbie/Pan Am bombing changed, for the better, how we do some of our own work.
"(T)hat past is certainly viewed on the ABC screen at times through rose-tinted glasses, but that does not make those memories any less worthy of reflecting on. To those today accustomed to air travel as hardly better than buses in flight, catching glimpses of when commercial jet travel was barely a decade old, VERY special and the preserve of those who had money, is only to reveal various historical truths. While there is no way we should want to return to that era in its entirety for reasons too numerous to list here, that also does not mean that era was utterly devoid of any positives whatsoever and doesn’t deserve dramatic portrayal.
The pilot was stylish, pacey, likeable and contained enough touches of the serious to show the program has potential if the storywriting and character development proves itself solid longer-term."
10/1
