Watch TV with Paul Flynn
HALFWAY THROUGH THE first season of Pose, I had a rush of TV blood to the head. An ensemble cast of predominantly BAME and LGBTQ emerging stars defiantly foregrounded in a US network drama was revolutionary. Through the intimacies of star-crossed teen lovers Ricky and Damon, trans streetwalker Angel, Shakespearean dominatrix Elektra, garrulous MC Pray Tell and kindly House Mother Blanca, the tale of New York’s ballroom culture was sketched. Yet the Vogue Balls of its set-pieces began to look like a smokescreen. Pose’s true motive is to recount the tragedy of AIDS in America, one dance step at a time.
Their astonishing tales are told with campy flourishes borrowed from Dynasty, Fame and Sex And The City, before subtly jumping back in a moment’s repose to the health pandemic that decimated a generation. Pose is a magic-realist fairy-tale, but also literal and noir. Poison apples abound. There is a redemptive episode, toward the end of season two, in which Miss Blanca is given a full Baywatch narrative on Fire Island. It’s the first time this tenacious, broke New Yorker has seen the sea. Episode four’s key death is played out in a stunning sequence of ghostly funereal visitations – both electrifyingly funny and bring-the-tissues sad – which elevated Pose from cult concern to Emmys news item in America when it aired earlier this summer. The flair and ferocity of its cast on red carpets is by now legendary.
Pose buries hard truths in its fabulosity, built on music, theatre and empathy. You can look forward to pulse-racing moments set to the work of Stephanie Mills, En Vogue and Whitney in the weeks ensuing. The entire new season is set against the US chart trajectory of Madonna’s Vogue.
Guest stars Sandra Bernhard as the harangued AIDS nurse, Patti Lupone as a ghastly Manhattan property mogul and Trudie Styler as, yes, model agency overlord Eileen Ford bring some old-school stardust. But Pose is a drama bespoke for every Miss Candy, Miss Lulu and intermittent underling of the House of Wintour. It’s for the ones who danced their way defiantly through trauma. It sanctifies the dead while revelling in every untold texture of life. The category is: Miraculous Realness.
Begins Saturday, 9pm, BBC Two