{blackbabes} Playboy Bunnies on parade

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Get your Playboy minds out of the gutter.

Yes, NBC knows: When you hear The Playboy Club, you think topless girls, wild sex and more topless girls. Well, this is network TV. Think Bunny costumes, Mad Men-era outfits and, just to keep things interesting on a weekly basis, a Chicago mob plot.

Oh, and female liberation. Really. "The show is all about empowering and who these women can be, and how they can use the club to be anyone they want," says producer Chad Hodge.

And while it may look like Mad Men, says producer Ian Biederman, it isn't Mad Men. For one thing, each episode will have musical numbers that thread through the episodes and comment on the characters. Says Hodge, you can expect impersonators of Sammy Davis Jr., Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Tina Turner and "anybody who had something to do with Playboy at the time."

And yes, sex will be there. But, says Biederman, the show is "mild compared to a lot of things that are on television. The intent of this show is to show characters at a certain time and place trying to become something…It has nothing to do with being racy."

It also pays to remember, says show star Leah Renee, that the Playboy Clubs were not strip clubs. Men were not allowed to touch the Bunnies, let alone date them -- and they certainly didn't get lap dances from them. There was a difference between a Playmate centerfold and a Bunny, says Hodge, and their show is staying on the Bunny side.

Hop to.