DVD Review: Get To Know The Residents Of 28 Barbary Lane In Armistead Maupin’s Tales Of The City

On the way home after seeing a show, Mona (Chloe Webb) asks Mrs. Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis) what would’ve happened if she’d decided against moving to 28 Barbary Lane. Suddenly music creeps up, like there’s a spell around the place. “It was inevitable that I wind up here,” Mona says. “No, not inevitable. Just necessary,” Mrs. Madrigal replies. “But why?” Mona asks. “Because… it’s home. Good night.”
Explaining what makes Tales of the City unusual is a lot like trying to explain what makes that scene from episode three unsettling. It’s a miniseries where, if somebody told you magic was real, you’d shrug and say you suspected all along, but try to put your finger on evidence and you come up emptyhanded.
That’s because Tales of the City is ordinary – stubbornly and, in the case of the finale, unnervingly so. It’s an ordinariness that permeates into the characters’ names. The series begins with Mary Ann Singleton (Laura Linney) moving to San Francisco from Cleveland. Armistead Maupin, who wrote the Tales of the City books, talks about Mary Ann in a commentary track for episode one. Instead of “Singleton” being some comment on Mary Ann’s love life (such an explanation isn’t even offered), Maupin associates “Singleton” with “one of a kind” and “single town.”

That explanation’s kinder, but it also shows how easily Mary Ann can be underestimated. Many of the characters call her naive, and that adjective isn’t off the mark, but naive doesn’t mean saint, and that’s not a judgement but a comment on how these characters don’t prescribe to certain arcs. Take Brian (Paul Gross), one of Mary Ann’s neighbors. While Mary Ann thinks he’s a sleezy womanizer, there’s one night when no one else is around and she resorts to knocking on his apartment door. They have a conversation. Brian listens, but they don’t come out of the night close friends.
Brian isn’t the Beast, to Mary Ann’s Beauty, and Tales of the City captures those encounters you have that never go any further, but for one day or night you hang out with someone and it’s not insignificant. Brian doesn’t become a monk. Mary Ann’s opinions don’t dramatically change, but she’s also not the leading lady you expect. Tales of the City is about every resident of 28 Barbary Lane, not singularly or mainly her, and the small world that is San Francisco, 1976.
Whether it’s as small as depicted is debatable. Characters go the entire series without realizing they have friends in common. The finale could be one, continuous reveal of shared acquaintances, but the fact that the show doesn’t go there, is why it works.
There’s little resolution but storylines aren’t played for cliffhangers either. If the show wanted cliffhangers they would have piled them all at the end, so you couldn’t miss the dangling storylines, but it’s more of a dawning realization that these lives are continuing and we won’t be privy to what happens.
There are two sequels, and an upcoming revival on Netflix will see Linney and Dukakis return, but the incompleteness feels apiece with how hard it is to explain this show. Ordinary but extraordinary at the same time, Tales of the City is a community. It’s a group of people you get to know, like a fly on the wall, and while their lives may be mundane, they’re never routine. 28 Barbary Lane has magic.

Bonus Features:

• Three commentary tracks but of interviews done separately and cut together, instead of a conversation where participants (Dukakis, Linney, Maupin, director, Alastair Reid, and actress, Barbara Garrick) are in the same room. The format’s not ideal but the tracks aren’t without insight.
• What’s indispensable are the behind the scenes videos Reid filmed, and had filmed, of cast members rehearsing and certain scenes being shot. There’s also a pamphlet where Maupin and producer, Alan Poul, contribute some words on how the series came together and its reception. After the series aired on PBS in 1994, there was an uproar over the marijuana use (Mrs. Madrigal keeps a garden) and gay relationships portrayed on-screen, making the series a forerunner in representation and not sanitizing the time, or city (though the revival hopes to rectify an absense of LGBTQ people of color).

Tales of the City is available now on DVD and starts streaming June 4th on Acorn TV.