New show: Smash

Musical drama Smash premieres tonight at 10 on Sky Atlantic. If you like drama, singing, beautiful people being magnificent bastards and Marilyn Monroe then you have come to the right place. Step inside, the overture has just begun.

That's right, I did say "musical drama". If you used to watch Glee for the toe-tapping fun, but found it a bit childish and too brightly lit, then Smash is for you. Conversely, if you used to watch Brothers & Sisters but found that there weren't enough people breaking into song just before sleeping together or taking too many pills with their gin, then bang, Smash is for you too.

Centred around the process of creating a new musical based on the life and times of Marilyn Monroe, Smash follows the writers, actors, director and producers as they work to bring the show from vague idea in a kitchen to full Broadway fruition as personal lives and incredulously unlikely subplots contrive to trip them all. Tonight's opening episode covers the inception (braaahhhhm) of the show, and the very first auditions.

There are about a thousand people in the cast, which is great when you're looking at engaging TV that lasts 23 episodes a series, but rubbish when you're just trying to explain to people why they should watch a series full of grown-ups in leg warmers bursting into Katy Perry covers. One thing the series does do, to its credit, is have them sing quite a few original songs written by Tony-winning composers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman taken from the fictional "Marilyn!". These are bloody good, rip-roaring musical numbers which makes you pretty sure that, whatever the feedback from the series itself, Smash is 97% likely to spawn a Marilyn musical.

This is one-third of the cast. ONE THIRD.

Debra Messing of Will & Grace fame is Julia Houston, one half of musical writing double-act Houston & Levitt who have been knocking Broadway dead for 10 years. Her other half, Tom Levitt, is played by Christian Borle, an actual Broadway star (in fact, one of many in the show). He writes the music and Julia writes the words - like Tim Rice and Elton John, only... nope, they're exactly like that.

They snag on the idea of making the show, and take it to their producer Eileen Rand. Eileen is played with delicious cunning and quiet dignity by Anjelica Houston, the latest movie star who has been hijacked by the lure of TV. She's marvellous in this; throwing drinks, seducing younger men, being fabulous. Unfortunately, no one told Ms Houston's face that she is enjoying herself, resulting in a cache of promotional advertising which implies she's bored out of her arch and haughty mind.

More Morticia? Less? I'm getting paid, yes?

When Max Bialestock asks in The Producers "Who do you have to fuck to get a break in this town?!", the answer is clearly Derek Wills. Wills is a hot Broadway director, referred to by the chorus (sorry, ensemble) as The Dark Lord, who has a penchant for seducing his leading ladies and winning butt-loads of Tonys in the process. Eileen wants him on board and Houston & Levitt have worked with him with successful and yet juicily disastrous results years previously. It's all so soap opera, it's brilliant.

Jack Davenport manages to imbue Wills with such a clever mixture of sexy artistic genius and utter cockhearted cruelness that you can see why women would fall at his feet to be in his shows. As always, any English accent in an American drama sounds absurdly plummy and Oxford, but it's all part of Wills' mysterious charm.

And then there are the Marilyns.

Vavavoom!

Katherine McPhee came second in American Idol in 2006, but in Smash she comes very much first as Karen Cartwright, a small-town girl living in a lonely world. Living in New York actually, with her sexy English Mayor's-Office-working boyfriend, so not very lonely. She is from a small town, though. And she's a talent; so much so that in the auditions (where she's the only one who turns up without a blonde wig on) Karen blows the panel's mind and becomes one of two girls vying for the part.

The other girl is Ivy Lynn. Ivy looks like Marilyn, sings like Marilyn and is mentally not particularly stable as Marilyn. She's been in the chorus of Tom and Julia's shows for years and is pretty much a shoo-in for the part until Karen arrives. She's also played by Megan Hilty, who has been kicking ass on Broadway since 2004.

Ivy hates Karen, thinking she's just breezed into a top spot without putting in the years of bleeding feet, throat nodules and living in shoeboxes that Ivy has. And of course she's absolutely right, but seeing as Karen is really the only likeable person on screen most of the time, it's not hard to see why the audience root for her to get the part.

Thankfully, we don't have to suffer through 10 episodes worth of cliffhangers; in somewhat of a departure from episodic US drama, the role is tentatively cast in the second episode, which makes the series less about Marilyn the part and more about the entire process and pitfalls, both moral and metaphorical, that are strewn around the path to glory.

There are a good few cameos from musical critics and broadway stars, not least Bernadette Peters, and Uma Thurman pops in for a few episodes midway through the season, gently sending up her own work in The Producers.

Smash may not be for everyone, but it is a lot of fun, and a lot of extremely overblown drama. I recommend it be watched with large glasses of wine and popcorn, and room in your room for a shimmy and a sing-a-long, because you'll need it.