These Aspiring Hamilton High Musicians Are ‘Totally in Tune’

The Disney Channel’s recent forays into unscripted television have yielded some wonderfully entertaining programming in recent months, and that happy trend continues tonight with a fascinating peek inside a school for the performing arts in Los Angeles.

“Totally in Tune,” a documentary on Hamilton High’s magnet program for music, premieres with a pair of half-hour episodes airing back-to-back beginning at 8:30 p.m. The show’s regular spot during its 10-episode run will be Sundays at noon.

The program’s genius is its ability to create an immediate rapport for viewers with many of the roughly 60 students in the orchestra who share snippets of their lives with the filmmakers. Crisply edited sound bites are accompanied by the first names and instrument(s) of the subjects, and by the end of the first episode you feel as if you already have a rooting interest in some of these people, complete with their strengths, quirks and insecurities.

Dennis, 15, has trouble keeping focus after being passed over for a prized solo shot. Marcus, 16, worries that he’ll let everyone down at a live performance. Shura, 16, believes the orchestra has no business playing before an audience without several more years of practice.

Evolution Film and Tape, the crackerjack production team behind the Disney Channel’s marvelous “Bug Juice” and “Totally Hoops” unscripted series, filmed “Totally in Tune” over a four-month period last year. On-campus rehearsals and performances, regular ability tests for orchestra standing and a grand finale in San Francisco give the series a natural dramatic thrust. The rest is up to the kids, and there are bravura performances all around.