Even without female lead Jessica Lord, Find Me In Paris is solid enough to attract a large audience, including me, but with her, the experience is memorable. Ten minutes into the first episode, she was far out in front of both the writing and a cast hired more for its dance ability than its acting chops. Her coworkers will flood television for decades, but Lord is on a fast track to a big-budget, A-list feature. She checks literally every box: young, blond, pretty (even "hot"), can cry on cue like a soap-opera queen, and convey an innocence which suggests blissful unawareness that Center Stage, Kate & Leopold, Back To The Future, and Time After Time were pulverized in a Cuisinart to yield this show.
We have a time-traveling (Back To The Future) ballerina (Center Stage), separated by more than a century from her boyfriend (Kate & Leopold), and chased by psychotic Brit criminals (Time After Time). The story literally writes itself, but is humorously executed. Massive scenery is chewed. The only reason this works is Jessica Lord being talented enough to convince us not to root against Helena, and the bad guys adhering to their own rigorously moral code as much as the "good guys" try, and fail, to adhere to theirs.
Some of the dance scenes are phenomenal, though it has that "Empire" feeling to it in that the fictional verdict on the content is stronger than its real-world counterparts.
