Leap Years

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Showtime (ended 2002)
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Show Summary

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Welcome to Leap Years guide at TV.com!


Leap Years is a unique show that takes a group of five friends living in New York and shows you what their lives are like in 1993, 2001, and 2008.



The theme song heard playing at the opening and closing credits of Leap Years is called "Once in a Lifetime" and is performed by The Talking Heads. The lyrics are as follows:

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-Well...How did I get here?
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...moreless
6.2
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Episode Guide

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S 1 :  Ep 20 Aired 1/31/02
S 1 :  Ep 19 Aired 1/24/02
S 1 :  Ep 18 Aired 1/17/02
S 1 :  Ep 17 Aired 1/10/02
S 1 :  Ep 16 Aired 11/4/01

Cast & Crew

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Fan Reviews (2)

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  • This show has one of the more original premise attached to it, five friends and their relationship over 15 years, only it is presented to us as a series of flash forwards and flashbacks from 1993 to 2001 to 2008.moreless

    8.5
    "Great"
    By jupiter6921, Nov 09, 2007
    This was a really great show that didn't get the airtime it deserved! The storyline was fascinating, but the writers were limited by the single season without confirmation that the show was ever going to be renewed. This was in the early years of Showtime Original Series and there were lots of ideas floating out there at the time. I don't know where you can see it now that it's off the air, but it would be great to see the concept of the show revitalized and started over. The show itself is somewhat weak in that the characters are generally stereotypes (the whiny rich Jewish guy, the diva who becomes a victim of her ego and greed, the arty gay guy, the poor kid who makes good only to become what he used to despise) but the actors do a fairly good job of fleshing them out. The plots can be a tad confusing if you are just catching an episode with all the jumps forward and back, but once you catch a couple of episodes things become clear and you quickly become addicted to finding out what comes next and how it will affect their future.moreless

  • Leap Years: A Killer Concept Slickly Soaped

    6.6
    "Fair"
    By traceytoney, Jan 05, 2006
    Leap Years is an engaging and somewhat addictive soap opera with a KILLER CONCEPT: intertwining the past (1993), present (2001) and future (2008) events in the lives of a circle of friends. The leaps backward and forward can at first be a little jarring and confusing, but you catch on quickly if you follow the well orchestrated cues.

    Clever but subtle timeline clues are provided, such as keeping the characters' physical appearances and clothing preferences consistent during a time period, but very distinct from another time period. (Watch Gregory's hair and Beth's glasses for surefire signposts.) Music is also put to good use to serve this purpose.

    Especially interesting from a dramatic perspective are the juxtapositions of the past cause / genesis of an event, the (current) event itself and the future downstream effect / outcome of the event.

    Character growth is reflected in the characters' actions and dialogue, but we don't see the kind of change in bearing and presence that you'd expect over a 15 year timeframe in someone's life. An exception to this is the Gregory character, who comes out and matures to acceptance of his gayness during the 15 years. (For this we can probably credit Queer as Folk producer-creators Lipman and Cowen who also created Leap Years.)

    As earlier stated, this is a soap, so the characters are a somewhat stereotypical cardboard rainbow: the black diva actress-singer, the Hispanic boy-from-the-hood made good lawyer-cum-politico, the artsy queer writer / director, the Jewish trust fund baby who matures from idealistic to jaded and the goody-two-shoes WASP schoolteacher. The plots are somewhat melodramaticblindness, murdered lovers, casting couch, mob lawyers, etc. --but again, it's a soap.

    For a concept so tricky to pull off, Leap Years makes very few egregious gaffs. For one, the 2008 events suffer from a little too much futurism. This series premiered in 2001, and the clothing, furnishings and cars shown in the 2008 segments would have been a bit of a stretch for only a seven year jump. (Let's keep in mind that the lifespan of a typical car's body style is 4 years and that laptops don't really LOOK radically different from their 1996 ancestors.) Watched in 2006, some of the 2008 scenes are reminiscent of the old flying cars and jetpacks 50s and 60s vision of the 21st century. (It would have been cheaper and more realistic for Leap Years to have extrapolated one or two common itemssay TVs or cell phoneswhich have changed pretty radically in shape and form over the last decade or so.) But then again, the overdone future does help you distinguish these events from 1993 and 2001.

    Luckily this show doesn't seem to take itself too seriously. Watch for the amusingly tongue-in-cheek episodes in which we see Gregory directing a 2001 film based on events that we saw happen to him in 1993. This makes for some fun dj vu.

    The choice of Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" for a theme song is also a nice touch.

    Leap Years is a fun take on a great concept. However the concept itself is very cool and I'd love to see it worked to more serious dramatic effect in a film or mini-series some day. It might even be fun to see it applied to a dramatized "biography" of someone famous or some famous event.
    moreless
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  • Leap Years In Rerun
    Is there anyone who (still) watches this show? I think it is one of the most creative that I've seen. I watched it in original run...
    By Ppunkinseed, Apr 05, 2006
    04/05/06
    1
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