According to AOL Television, Viva Laughlin, which premiered tonight on CBS, is the worst new show of the season. What the reviewer found most appalling about the show, which is based on the popular British TV series Viva Blackpool, was the scenes in which the characters sing along with old rock music hits such as "Viva Las Vegas" and "Sympathy for the Devil."

Those music sequences really are about as awful as can be. They constitute a huge distraction from the narrative, and unlike the analogous scenes in classic Hollywood musicals, in Viva Laughlin they don’t advance the story any more than a couple of lines of dialogue would have done.

They’re an especially egregious mistake because without them the show would actually be pretty decent. It has an interesting and rather likeable main character, Ripley Holden, an entrepreneur who is trying to turn the sale of a string of convenience stores (which he built up on his own) into the construction of a brand-new five-star resort and casino. Ripley’s optimism, forthrightness, and basic honesty make him likeable, but he does have flaws, especially a tendency to run roughshod over other people’s feelings.

In this regard the premiere episode has a nice exchange where, in the classic cliche, Ripley claims that he’s doing it all for his family, and his wife, Natalie (Madchen Amick), points out that he’s the one with the big dream, and they’re "only along for the ride."

The show also has an excellent villain, Nicky Fontana, played by Hugh Jackman. Fontana owns the biggest casino in the town of Laughlin, Nevada, on the Colorado River south of Las Vegas, and he definitely doesn’t want Ripley to open up a better place.

The premiere episode also introduced a potentially decent murder mystery: a financial backer, who was about to back out of an investment worth 25 percent of the casino, is shot to death in Ripley’s office. Ripley is an obvious suspect, but several others also have very good motives. Hence Ripley must clear his name while trying to secure funding and open his casino and hotel.

Also interesting is the rather youthful homicide detective investigating the case. Peter Carlyle (Eric Winter) refuses to rush to judgment and instead pursues the case quite calmly and methodically.

Carlyle decides that the best way to get good information on Ripley is to talk with Ripley’s wife without her knowing he’s a homicide detective. So he engineers a couple of romantic-comedy-style "meet cute" scenes through which to become introduced to her and hopefully glean information from her over time. That’s an amusing new wrinkle on the police detective and makes for a couple of interesting and subtly comical scenes.

Unfortunately, the musical scenes really do ruin the effect of the program, entirely destroying the willing suspension of disbelief which is necessary to the appreciation of any fictional narrative.

If the producers had been satisfied to make a nice, snappy drama with comic elements and a strong murder mystery, as Viva Laughlin would have been without the musical sequences, they might have put together a very decent program.

The gimmick may have helped them interest the CBS brass enough to get the show on the air—but it will probably be the thing that ends up getting it off the air as well.