I would watch Christopher Walken in anything so I saw Peter Pan Live! Big mistake. I actually like musicals and theatricality, but I don’t understand the impulse behind NBC’s attempts to recapture the glory days when tv could broadcast theater to an audience that may not have access to great theater productions. It is true that even now most tv audiences probably can’t afford or don’t think that they can afford to go to the theater, but Peter Pan Live! fails to capture that thrilling experience. NBC should leave that task to PBS. PBS wisely films Broadway productions after years of successful performance and does not film a performance created solely for television. There are probably 5 minutes when I felt like it succeeded-when Minnie Driver appeared. Driver wasn’t acting-she became her character and imbued the scene with genuine emotion and without flying or hamming it up. Most of the cast didn’t transform or transport me anywhere except to my pause button. My dear infallible Walken felt like he was resuming his role in Balls of Fury and clearly the production did its best to distract the audience from the limits imposed by age. I never thought of it before Once Upon A Time, but Peter Pan is a really strange story in terms of gender, sexuality, classism and colonialism and continuing the practical tradition of casting a woman as Peter Pan long after its practical necessity no longer exists, makes it stranger still.