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Mozart in the Jungle (2014-), a 2016 Best Comedy Series Golden Globe nominee, is based on a memoir of the same name by oboist Blair Tindall and details the inner workings of a prestigious New York symphony. The show, adapted by Roman Coppola and his close friend Jason Schwartzman, along with Alex Timbers and Paul Weitz, has a strong film pedigree and a cinematic sensibility to match. Working in the traditionally populist medium of TV, the Coppola/Schwartzman influence lends the smooth, languid quality of an American Zoetrope production to the high-brow subject of the world of classical music. While the show is aware of and relishes its pretensions, it also humanizes musicians and their art, making the music universal and accessible.

To understand how the show explores the universality of art, rewatch Season 1, Episode 4: “You Have Insulted Tchaikovsky.” And don’t just rewatch. With Mozart, you need to re-listen.

One of the central players in this high-low exercise is Gael Garcia Bernal, who has received a 2016 Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a musical or comedy series. Bernal plays Rodrigo, a Peruvian wunderkind conductor (clearly based on hotshot Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel), whom the sympony hires Rodrigo to breathe life into the struggling and stuffy New York Symphony. In his new position, Rodrigo brings fire and “the blood” to the orchestra’s music but struggles with the rarefied air on the mountaintops of the classical music world. Music, to him, should be populist and humanistic, an art that brings people together instead of further solidifying socio-economic stratification.

This is a show built around music: the central character, Hailey, is an oboist, and the locus of all of the show’s drama and multiple plotlines is the symphony. All of the music in the series – not just what is performed onscreen, but the score, as well – is important. “You Have Insulted Tchaikovsky” illustrates how the show’s score informs not only the narrative but also the characters. In this episode, Rodrigo hears music at every point in his journey through New York: in the rare collections section of the library, at a café, and eventually at a sympony fundraiser. During a limo ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, he encourages Hailey to close her eyes and listen to the symphonic sounds of the city: the snare drums in the clatter of the bridge, the strings in the hum of the cars against the roadway, and the woodwinds in the sirens and horns.

Viewers don’t have to have a musician’s imagination to feel the emotional impact of this sequence: the sound team layers those symphonic effects over the visuals, placing the viewer squarely in Rodrigo and Hailey’s experience. This urban cacophony stands in sharp contrast to the classical piano piece the former Maestro plays at the fundraiser and the Latin music playing in the background at the café, or even the classical score heard at the library. During each set piece, there is music that not only adds texture and atmosphere to the scene but also illuminates the emotional inner life of the characters, particularly Rodrigo’s. “You Have Insulted Tchaikovsky” encapsulates the show’s view that music is conflict and love and anger and joy, and that it doesn’t just live inside the four walls of the symphony hall.

Applying cinematic techniques and sophistication to the traditionally safer, commercial medium of TV, Mozart in the Jungle is a non-traditional show in all the new ways that are slowly becoming more traditional. The series launched as part of the Amazon Pilots program, in which viewers watched the first episode of several shows produced as Amazon Originals for their Prime streaming platform. Viewers voted for their favorites, and those votes influenced Amazon’s full season orders. With its potentially elitist subject matter, the show was a somewhat unlikely winner of this online popularity contest. However, with its embrace of the high- and lowbrow, Mozart in the Jungle has managed to bridge prestige and popularity.

Mozart‘s second season premieres on Amazon Prime Streaming on December 30th, 2015, but, in the meantime, rewatch and re-listen to all ten episodes of Season 1.