The series is full of glamour and trumps with a very good cinematography and good special effects. It shows an ideal world of 1960's air travel that is almost to shiny and too clean. The special effects and the recreation of the cabin are done well. One of the most obvious flaws is that anyone who has ever flown on a 707 or similar plane would know that the sound of the jet engines was much louder inside the cabin and of course there would have been more turbulence or movements of the plane in real life. Still, the service, particularly in economy call, is portrayed accurately and puts to shame the service offered today. The same goes for the personal space afforded to people in economy class. However, despite some inaccuracies it is very well done and it has to be acknowledged that it is a marvellous attempt to recreate the atmosphere of luxury jet set travel and the feeling and politics of the Cold War.

It's 1963. Laura Cameron (Margot Robbie) is a runaway bride following her black sheep sister Kate (Kelli Garner) to be a Pan Am stewardess. Kate is recruited by government agent Richard Parks (Jeremy Davidson) to be a secret courier. Maggie Ryan (Christina Ricci) is the sassy wild one. Colette Valois (Karine Vanasse) is the worldly French one. Ted Vanderway (Michael Mosley) and Dean Lowrey (Mike Vogel) are pilots.It is a glossy mix of disparate and clashing story styles. The family drama of Kate and Laura is probably the most compelling and starts the show on the right foot. The cold war espionage drama is probably the most clashing. It is tonally a completely different show. Annabelle Wallis haunts the show like a ghost. Colette is probably the darkest. Again her dark tones clash with the bright shiny show. Christina Ricci is probably the most disappointing because the show struggles to find a long term stable story for her. Dean is weakly written or weakly performed. Ted has some good daddy issues but he gets annoying. This is a glossy shiny recreation of an era that is a bit too glossy. The clashing tones keep it from a stable platform. There is some good work from these beautiful women but the TV show struggles to figure out what it wants to be. It is a flighty workplace melodrama one minute and a dangerous espionage show the next.

I've tuned into this show since it's inception and I'm glad I did because it's one of the few shows on network TV that isn't following the usual cookie-cutter plots and story lines that so many of the other indistinguishable hospital-based/dysfunctional-family-driven/crime-of-the-week stuff that's out there. Not that any show dealing with those topics is bad, it's just getting tired and unoriginal. That's why Pan Am was such a breath of fresh air when it aired.Unfortunately, sometimes the plots felt like they were thrown together last minute to give each character their moment in the spotlight instead of concentrating on building the back stories of the flight crew through more group situations. The cast is great but while I found myself engrossed in some of the sub story lines (like Maggie's growing involvement in ethically questionable stuff or Laura's figurative jailbreak from a previously boring life with a new taste for adventure as a flight attendant and novice photographer, for instance), others kind of bored me. Kellie Garner's role as Kate and her adventures as a CIA courier/soon to be spy in training were just too forced and silly. When I DVR'ed the show, I'd fast forward through those particular parts because they just didn't mesh well. No offense to Ms. Garner, who is a top notch actress, but the part of the CIA trainee would've been more believable to me if any one of the other women in the cast played the role. Maybe it's because Ms. Garner looks too sweet and seems uncomfortable playing that part. I don't know. On a better note, the romantic entanglements are pretty cool and I'm loving the match ups. Mike Vogel's pretty boy Dean is an unlikely yet perfect match for the cool and mysterious Collette (Karine Vannasse), and the nice slow burn romance that's building between naive Laura (Margot Robbie) and hotshot pilot Ted (Michael Mosely) is charming. It would be cool to see Maggie and Kate get some constant companionship too. Finally, it would be nice to have a little more of the travel scene stuff because, hell, they're an airline crew and they go to some great places. Start to show some more of the places and sites and less of the inside of the terminal or their apartments so much. I hope this show makes it because it's good and, despite some disjointed stuff that seems to happen in many of the episodes, I still like it. Maybe ABC will take a chance and renew it and give it a better slot. Here's hoping.

I'm sooo disappointed in this, I really am.I had to stifle laughter often during the first few episodes - the "Captain" of the crew is about 25 years old for crying out loud! He and his co-pilot looking at each other laughing during take-off etc, I mean for God's sake!The "spy" stuff is just beyond belief, I mean, talk about being desperate for writing material!This is only good for your average 90 IQ girls, I can't believe any men would give this more than an episode or two before wanting a refund on their wasted time. SOME of the girls look good but you really won't want to be following the well-worn soap opera "plot lines" (basically weddings and romance and girls falling out with girls and boys and mothers and etc etc *YAWNATHON*).It's utterly pointless and the "Pan Am" setting could be anything, there's nothing here that is specific to Pan Am at all, it's purely a glamorous setting of convenience ...Turn the sound down (noone has anything interesting to say, ever), put on a favourite album and enjoy what (little, really) eye candy there is but seriously, for all but the braindead amongst us, this shouldn't even be in the top ten of your watch list.What was Christina Ricci thinking??!!What a waste ...