So Showtime’s rock ‘n’ roll series about the behind-the-scenes action behind a (fictional) rock band’s tour has been cancelled. This is not surprising, given the poor critical reception the show received, and the poor viewing figures. Half a million people, apparently, which isn’t many – but it says something about the show that this audience, though small, remained steady throughout its run.

Thing is, I read that Tim Goodman review in The Hollywood Reporter, and heard him discussing the show on the TV Talk Machine podcast, which led me to expect Roadies would be much, much worse than it actually is.

The theme here is that, while the world might be ready for a good TV series about rock music, neither Roadies nor HBO’s Vinyl are it. I started watching Vinyl with some excitement, but quickly grew tired of its meandering storylines, its pointless murder sub-plot, and the over-the-top performance by Bobby Cannavale. But the real reason I stopped watching Vinyl was that it was just nasty. It was a nasty show about nasty people and the blame for that goes to the door of Martin Scorsese, who set the tone in the series’ opening episode. The problem with that feature-length pilot was that it used movie-style broad brush strokes. Bobby Cannavale clearly hit rock bottom then and there, and continued to bump along on the bottom in subsequent episodes.

Roadies, on the other hand, was not nasty. It was corny, and mawkishly sentimental, and criminally underused some of its cast, and the blame for all of that belongs to show creator Cameron Crowe. But overall, its heart was in the right place, and I think there were enough good – fun, even – things about the show that it might have been redeemed for a second season. Tim Goodman complained that early episodes underplayed the fictional Staten-House Band, but I think over the series the balance was about right. You could tell that the vision for the show was that the band were supposed to be just offscreen, in much the same way that the President was originally supposed to be in The West Wing. Now, Rob Lowe ended up leaving The West Wing when Martin Sheen’s President Bartlett took over the show – because it wasn’t the show he signed up to do. Roadies is meant to be about the people who usually occupy the background, so I think it was right that we only slowly got to know the band members.

The regular guest star slot for support acts and other musical walk-ons was one of the pleasures of Roadies. Again, support acts get short shrift in the real world, so it was good that the show focused on their struggles behind the scenes, as well as including cameos for the likes of Lindsay Buckingham and John Mellencamp.

My favourite episode was the Lynyrd Skynyrd flashback episode, with a well-cast Nathan Sutton as Ronnie Van Zandt – and a legend about them blowing the Stones off the stage when they supported them. Although it’s not hard to blow the Stones off the stage – they’re a shit live act.

So, it exists. Ten episodes of patchy quality but with enough warmth and heart to get you over the humps. I’ve enjoyed watching it. It’s free for Amazon Prime members, and unjustly maligned to be compared with the execrable Vinyl.