6 / 10
A Comfortable Show
Hotel is a comfortable show. It isn’t a good one, exactly, and I don’t think it was ever trying to be. It’s Aaron Spelling doing what Aaron Spelling did better than anybody in the eighties: put attractive people in an expensive set and let a new batch of guest stars have their problems there every week, and then check out before the credits.
It ran on ABC from September 1983 to May 1988, five seasons and a hundred and fifteen episodes, and for its first couple of years it was a genuine hit. It’s barely remembered now, and it’s easy to see why: nothing in it ever mattered enough to stick. It was designed to be pleasant, and it was pleasant, reliably, for five years.
I give it a 6. I went in expecting a glossy eighties soap and I got a glossy eighties soap, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Watching it now, it’s a time capsule, and there’s real pleasure in the capsule.
The St. Gregory
The St. Gregory is a grand old hotel on a hill in San Francisco, owned by the Cabot family and run day to day by a general manager and his staff. The exteriors are the Fairmont on Nob Hill, and they do a great deal of work. That building, with its white facade and its view across the city, makes the whole show look richer than it was.
Most of the rest was shot on soundstages in Los Angeles, and you can tell. The lobby is huge and spotless, the corridors gleam, and the suites look like a showroom. It’s a fantasy of a grand hotel, far cleaner and calmer than any real one. That fantasy was a large part of the appeal. For an hour a week, viewers got to stay somewhere they could never afford, with a staff who cared how their stay was going.
How Far It Strays From the Book
The series takes its title and its hotel from Arthur Hailey’s 1965 novel, and even keeps the names of its two leads, Peter McDermott and Christine Francis. Almost nothing else survives. Hailey’s St. Gregory is in New Orleans, not San Francisco, and it’s a failing independent hotel about to be swallowed by a hotel chain, over one tense week.
The novel is a tough, busy book. It has a duke and duchess covering up a fatal hit-and-run, a professional thief working the rooms, a crooked chief engineer, an ugly racial incident at the front desk, an elderly guest who turns out to be richer than anyone suspects, and a lift disaster. Hailey researched the business for a year, and every page is thick with how a hotel really works.
If you love the book, and I’ve read it many times, the series will disappoint you on that score. None of those plots are here. It keeps the idea of a grand hotel under pressure and the names on two doors, and it’s far better judged on its own gentle terms than against the book.
For Writers
The series keeps the name of Hailey’s novel and two of its characters and discards almost every plot. Readers who come looking for the book find a different story entirely.
When you adapt a source, the title creates a promise. Readers who loved the original arrive expecting its best scenes, and their disappointment can outweigh everything you did well.
Before you adapt, list the three scenes readers of the source love most. Either keep them in some form, or change the title so nobody arrives expecting them.
The Guest Story Machine
Each episode braids two or three guest stories together. A couple arrives for an anniversary with a secret between them. A businessman’s deal is collapsing. A famous actress is hiding from the press. They check in during the first act and check out at the end, and the staff touch every one of their lives along the way.
It’s a very efficient machine, the same one Spelling used on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. A writer can drop any kind of story into it, from comedy to tragedy, and the regular cast gives the audience a reason to come back next week. The guest list was part of the attraction too, a steady stream of old Hollywood names and television stars turning up for a week.
The weakness is built in. Nothing that happens to a guest can matter very much, because they’re gone in forty-eight minutes, and the show knows it. The emotional weight has to come from the staff, and the staff are written to be nice.
Peter and Christine
James Brolin plays Peter McDermott, the general manager, and he carries the show with an easy, reassuring authority. Peter solves problems by listening, by bending a rule when a guest needs it and by knowing every member of staff by name. He’s the manager everyone wishes they’d had, and Brolin makes that ease look like a quality instead of a lack of drama.
Connie Sellecca plays Christine Francis, his assistant manager, and the slow romance between them was the show’s real engine for five years. Their scenes are all glances across a crowded lobby, conversations cut short by a crisis and a steady warmth that never quite tips into anything difficult. It’s television romance at its most comfortable, and audiences loved it.
For Writers
Peter and Christine’s slow romance kept viewers coming back for five years while the guest stories came and went. The long relationship was the show’s real engine.
When you write an episodic series, individual stories can be forgettable as long as something continues underneath them. Without that thread, readers have no reason to pick up the next book.
Run one slow relationship through your whole series, and move it a small step in every instalment. Let readers finish each book wanting to know what happens between those two.
Anne Baxter
Bette Davis was cast as the owner and made the pilot, then fell ill and couldn’t continue. Anne Baxter, who had been Davis’s rival in All About Eve thirty years earlier, came in as Victoria Cabot, the owner’s sister-in-law, and gave the show its touch of old Hollywood class.
Baxter played Victoria with dry authority and a sense of history that none of the younger cast could match. When she died in December 1985, partway through the run, the show lost more than an actor. It lost its link to the past, the thing that made the St. Gregory feel like a place with a history instead of a set. The show wrote her out and carried on, and it never quite replaced her.
The Rest of the Staff
Around the leads, the staff are a small family. Shari Belafonte plays Julie, the front desk clerk. Heidi Bohay plays Megan, a young member of staff whose romance and marriage run across several seasons, and Nathan Cook plays Billy, the head of security, who knows where the bodies are buried and keeps quiet about it.
None of them is given much depth, but together they make the St. Gregory feel like a workplace, with its own gossip, rivalries and friendships. That’s what kept people watching. The individual stories were forgettable. The feeling of coming back every week to a place where the same people would be waiting was not.
The Wednesday Night Slot
Hotel ran on Wednesday nights, directly after Dynasty, and for its first couple of seasons that was one of the best places to be on American television. Dynasty brought in an enormous audience that wanted glamour, clothes and scandal, and Hotel kept them watching with a gentler version of the same thing.
The pairing explains the show’s whole design. It was built to follow Dynasty without competing with it: the same money and the same good lighting, without the cat fights and the shootings. When Dynasty’s audience started to shrink, Hotel’s shrank with it, and by the final season it was running on habit.
For Writers
Hotel was built to follow Dynasty on the schedule, offering the same glamour without the scandal. Its whole tone came from knowing exactly who would be watching and what they had just seen.
When you write, knowing where your work will sit, what readers have just finished and what they want next, can shape everything from tone to length.
Before you start, write one sentence describing the reader and what they read immediately before your book. Then decide whether you’re giving them more of that or a relief from it.
The Eighties Look
Watching it now, the best thing about Hotel is the period detail. The shoulder pads, the hair, the brass fittings, the fresh flowers in every shot and the synthesiser cues between scenes. It’s a perfect record of what American television thought luxury looked like in 1984.
Nobody in the St. Gregory is ever short of money, nobody’s problem lasts beyond the hour, and every crisis is settled by a sincere conversation in the manager’s office. It’s a world with no real danger in it. That’s exactly why people liked it. It was an hour of reassurance, every week, for five years.
Where Hotel Falls Short
The gentleness. Hotel never takes a risk, and its guest stories are too slight to leave a mark. The show that inherited Hailey’s name threw away everything that made his book gripping, the crime, the money and the danger, and replaced it with warmth.
On the other hand, the warmth works. Brolin and Sellecca are likeable together, the Fairmont still looks wonderful and the guest list is fun to spot. It’s a 6 because it does exactly what it set out to do and no more.
Television Before Box Sets
Hotel belongs to a kind of television that has almost vanished: shows designed to be watched once, week by week, with a new story every episode and the regular cast changing slowly in the background. Nobody expected viewers to remember last week’s guests or to watch five seasons in a row.
Judged that way, it did its job well. It gave viewers an hour of glamour and reassurance every Wednesday for five years. Watched today in a long run, the repetition shows, and the gentle formula wears thin. It’s best taken the way it was made, an episode at a time.
Where It Sits
It sits in the middle of the Spelling catalogue, gentler than Dynasty and more grown-up than The Love Boat. It’s a solid, dependable example of a kind of television that no longer exists: glossy, polite, built around a fixed cast and a rotating guest list, and meant to be watched one week at a time.
Watch an episode or two if you miss eighties network television or like spotting old stars in guest roles. Don’t try to binge it, and don’t expect the novel. If you want Hailey’s story, read the book, or look for the 1967 film with Rod Taylor. It is set in New Orleans and keeps far more of the plot.
Craft Note
Craft Note
Hotel keeps a fixed family of staff at the centre and sends a new set of guests through every week, so each episode can tell a fresh story while the regulars carry the long relationships.
When you write a series, readers come back for people they know, and they stay for a problem they haven’t seen yet. Lose either half and the series stalls.
Build a small stable cast whose relationships change slowly, then design every instalment so an outsider’s problem forces one of those relationships to move a little.
The Verdict on Hotel
A 6. Watch an episode or two if you miss eighties network television or enjoy spotting old stars in guest roles. It was made to be watched one week at a time. That’s still the best way to take it. If you want the real story of the St. Gregory, read Hailey’s novel.
Frequently Asked Questions
This film appears on one of my film lists