Glee Review

For one season, Glee felt like nothing else on television: a high school comedy that broke into full production numbers, mixing show tunes with chart hits, and sided unashamedly with the outcasts. The pilot's closing performance of a Journey anthem turned the cast into a recording act, and its songs went on to chart in numbers no television show had managed before. Critics loved its mix of sincerity and acid, and it won the Golden Globe for best comedy series twice.

Much of the pleasure is in the cast. Jane Lynch's Sue Sylvester, a cheerleading coach who speaks only in scorched earth, won an Emmy and gets the best lines; Lea Michele's Rachel is a precise portrait of relentless ambition; and Chris Colfer gives Kurt, a gay teenager coming out in small-town Ohio, a tenderness network television rarely allowed at the time.

The writing is where it falls apart. Storylines vanish between episodes, characters change personality to suit the week's theme, and the message episodes grow heavier as the jokes grow thinner. The third season is the low point, and the later years, split between Lima and New York, never find a centre. The numbers, staged and shot with real polish, keep it watchable to the end.