Pam & Tommy (Disney+)
Mary Beard’s Forbidden Art (BBC Two) | iPlayer
Station Eleven (Starzplay)
Race and Medical Experiments: What’s the Truth? (Channel 4) | All 4
It’s odd to think of the Disney+ series Pam & Tommy as a period piece, but as it’s set in the 1990s, that’s what it is. Based on an article by Amanda Chicago Lewis, it dramatises the fallout from the sex tape stolen from Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee and Playboy model/Baywatch actor Pamela Anderson, and also serves as a time capsule of the dawn of internet porn and the sexual mores of the era. These days, would Anderson be slut-shamed on a global level? Mind you, just as she didn’t consent to the release of the tape (a hedonistic sex marathon believed to generate $77m), nor did she give her blessing to this series, which is something to consider as the eight episodes unfold. The tone verges on hyperreal – at one point Lee’s penis talks, bobbing away like a CGI-uncooked sausage – but the people are real.
Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) directs the first three episodes and also executive produces. What saves Pam & Tommy from disappearing beneath a churning sea of retrospective-“ick” is a crisp script from Robert Siegel (The Wrestler) – Lee shouting: “I’m going to be a dad. On purpose” – and bravura performances. Lily James is transformed into Pam with hairpieces, fake teeth and prosthetics, including breasts so gargantuan, female viewers may be thinking less of sex than of biting bra straps and backache. Initially there’s the fear that James is going to play Anderson as a human pout, a pinkie-chewing 90s Marilyn Monroe in denim cut-off shorts, but as the nightmare develops, so does her vulnerability and anger.
As Lee (tattooed, jockstrapped, strutting around his Malibu mansion waving a gun), Sebastian Stan (Captain America: The First Avenger) goes full cartoon LA rock star, though in fairness, so do most LA rock stars. Seth Rogen (who helped develop the project) is fine as the appallingly treated workman who steals the tape, but we see far too much of him: his justifications, his regret, his being ripped off too, his interest in theology… enough already! Indeed, after lively opening episodes, the series starts to struggle as it gets into legal actions resulting from the leaking of the tape. This show seems to want to be viewed in the same light as Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 porn-set masterpiece Boogie Nights, but the piquant blend of sleaze and heart isn’t quite there. James is dynamite though: Anderson is portrayed not as a Barbie doll having a tantrum, but as a real hurting woman.
For the shock of the illicit, the first of BBC Two’s two-part documentary Mary Beard’s Forbidden Art delivered arty obscenities and cultural nasties by the shovelful: penises galore, war atrocities, incest, bestiality. It wasn’t long before I was so burnt out and desensitised, a full-blown multi-species orgy could have erupted at the other end of the sofa and I’d have just sighed and chucked over some wet wipes.
This was an engrossing documentary in which the Cambridge University professor of classics examined not only banned works, but also art that people choose to look away from. Tracey Emin spoke candidly about her oeuvre, detailing her assaults, abortions and cancer: “If I go through hell, I make paintings about hell.” Turner prize winner Martin Creed showed videos depicting people first vomiting, then defecating on to the floor (shocking – no one wiped). Daphne Todd won the BP portrait award in 2010 for her painting of her 100-year-old mother shortly after her death. Todd stopped painting her after three days, saying: “I didn’t want it to get to a point where there was a smell, I suppose.” Even Beard blanched at that one.
A 10-part Starzplay adaptation of Emily St John Mandel’s 2014 bestseller, Station Eleven, adapted by Patrick Somerville, arrives bearing a spookily familiar theme. A virus destroys the world’s population, and years later, a troupe of thespians travel around, foraging, surviving, performing the works of Shakespeare, keeping the spirit of creativity alive.
I wasn’t optimistic (foraging hippy troupes? I’ve done my time at Glastonbury), but a few episodes in, I’m finding Station Eleven richly themed and intriguing. This is about wars of the outer and inner world (love and hope versus evil and menace). In the virus scenes, it’s inky in its darkness: dead people slump over workstations; a plane crashes in a long, slow moment; snow-blanketed cars are marooned in a motionless jam.
Danielle Deadwyler is haunting as the heartbroken, demotivated author of a graphic novel called Station Eleven. Mackenzie Davis is raw and credible as Kirsten, who was a child actor performing on stage in King Lear when the plague struck and the lead (Gael García Bernal) died. Kirsten goes on to become one of the Shakespearean performers, but is she too zealous about protecting the troupe at all costs?
At times, Station Eleven becomes choked up on themes, time zones and characters, and liberties have been taken with reality: in this post-civilisation, everybody has straight white teeth – clearly all the dentists survived. Still, especially considering our own recent history, this is meaty, absorbing fare, with a true sense of global and personal catastrophe.
Sometimes a documentary sharply nudges you awake and makes you look at things differently. Seyi Rhodes’s hardworking Channel 4 documentary Race and Medical Experiments: What’s the Truth? did just that. An examination of heightened vaccine hesitancy among ethnic minorities, it took a forensic look at why some people of colour harbour an ingrained distrust of science and medicine.
Rhodes travelled to the US to relate some grim history. In Tuskegee, Alabama, black people with syphilis were treated as experiments and allowed to die, even though a cure was available. Among other outrages, he also looked into the 20th-century testing of mustard gas on hundreds of British and Indian soldiers. Rhodes, who is vaccinated himself, steered this shocking documentary with calm authority, explaining how people of colour were helping one another overcome their deep-set hesitancy. This was a sobering, valuable hour shining a bright torch into a dark area.
What else I’m watching
BBC Three relaunch
The channel’s return to terrestrial TV last week included RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Vs the World and repeats of Fleabag, which originally aired on BBC Three, as did Sally Rooney’s Normal People. An adaptation of Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations With Friends, is imminent.
Celebrity Hunted
(Channel 4)
A celebrity version of the show in which contestants evade capture by “hunters”, but for how long? In the opener, former Olympic sprinter Iwan Thomas popped home! (Last time, Stanley Johnson seemed to go on his hols.) All in aid of Stand Up to Cancer.
The Tourist
(BBC One)
The series finale of the Australian outback-based thriller that turned out to have more plotholes than a doily. Still, Jamie Dornan and Danielle Macdonald are good, the locations are stunning, and at least it’s been a bit different.
