PETER PAN LIVE! DOESN’T FLY WITH CRITICS OR VIEWERS

The live, three-hour Peter Pan special was neither a ratings nor a critical success Thursday night. Preliminary ratings indicate that the special, which starred Allison Williams in the title role, was down 46 percent from last year’s Sound of Music Live!. Among total viewers, it averaged 9.1 million viewers versus 9.5 million for CBS’s primetime lineup. Among the key 18-49 age group it barely edged out CBS, scoring a 2.3 rating and a 7 share versus a 2.2/7 for CBS. Critics generally agreed that the production was not a total train wreck as many had expected. As Alesssandra Stanley put it in the New York Times: “Those who watched the musical Peter Pan Live! on NBC on Thursday in hopes of lighting up the Twittersphere with catty commentary were doomed to disappointment.” But Stanley agreed that the production was far too long and that “too many commercial interruptions helped deaden the pace.” Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles times agreed. The production, she wrote, “was far from the disaster hate-watchers hoped for, but despite all the big dance numbers, credible solos and accident-free flight, it dutifully marched, and occasionally crawled where it should have soared.” Similarly David Hinkley wrote in the New York Daily News: “NBC’s annual live musical event had spirit and lively dancing Thursday night. It also felt long and flat.” James Poniewozik in Time gave it a so-so review, concluding, unenthusiastically: “Taken on its own silly, sweet, weird-British-fantasia terms, it was a good time; even without a childhood memory attaching me to the story, I liked it well enough.”