“Stand By Your Man” was the most popular — and debated — song by Tammy Wynette. In “George & Tammy,” the six-part Showtime drama about her short but complicated marriage to fellow country music star George Jones, she sings that famous song twice, first in the recording studio when she’s not fully on board with it yet.
Then she sings it again later, on stage in a Vegas casino, where she’s forced to perform alone because her husband is on yet another bender somewhere, leaving her to pick up the pieces. They didn’t call him No Show Jones for nothing. But the crowd in that casino is not happy; they were promised a double bill of country music royalty. Wynette wins them over with an on-the-fly strategic decision that reveals her canny sense of stagecraft: She scraps her set list and starts with “Stand By Your Man,” and it’s a complicated moment at once bittersweet, ironic, triumphant and deeply, deeply sad.
The limited series starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain is at its best when it uses the couple’s music to make subtle (or not-so-subtle) points about their tumultuous relationship. But that deep sadness? It hangs over everything.
