The worst show you can’t stop watching
It’s hard to stand out in a world with 800 new series debuting every year. How do you get noticed? Is it better to make the best show of the year? Or the worst? Or in the case of “Pose” (9 p.m. Sunday, FX, TV-MA), a little bit of both?
It’s not every day that a major television production comes along (in this case written and directed by the insanely prolific Ryan Murphy) that is based on a small 1990 documentary. For most viewers, director Jennie Livingston’s “Paris Is Burning” was the first they’d ever heard of the Harlem drag-ball scene, elaborate fashion and performance competitions between “houses” of drag artists whose flamboyant creativity and audacious showmanship stood in contrast to their outcast status, with some participants homeless and others afflicted with AIDS.
“Pose” captures the magic and spectacle of the drag balls depicted in “Paris.” It also attempts to create an ongoing soap opera about its participants as well as other New Yorkers during the money-obsessed 1980s.
That’s where the whole contraption appears to come apart at the seams and at the same time falls together as an addictive mess — an over-the-top, so-bad-it’s-good melodrama you can’t stop watching.
While they appeal to very different audiences, the balls share a loud, hyperbolic intensity with professional wrestling. Everybody involved is always “on.” There is no room for subtlety.
Dominique Jackson plays Elektra Abundance, the “mother” of the most successful house. Imagine a black Amazon in drag approximating the subtlety of Faye Dunaway in “Mommie Dearest” and you’re getting close.
MJ Rodriguez plays Blanca Rodriguez, a kinder and gentler artist who breaks away to form her own house, adopting Damon Richards (Ryan Jamaal Swain), a runaway would-be dancer thrown away by his homophobic parents. They are joined by Angel (Indya Moore), a transgender street walker who longs to find a sugar daddy to take care of her. He arrives in the form of straight, white, married broker-type Stan (Evan Peters, “American Horror Story”), who works at Trump Tower for Matt (James Van Der Beek), who embodies every suspender-wearing yuppie cliche from the zircon decade. Billy Porter stands out as Pray Tell, the emcee for all of the balls and the nurturing godfather to the whole scene.
Not everyone who appears in “Pose” is a professional actor. But everybody has to deliver dollops of expository dialogue, defending, explaining and championing the drag world in the face of hostility. “Pose” delivers nonstop diva tirades and political manifestos. It’s rather breathtaking.
“Pose” joins “Vinyl,” “The Deuce,” “I’m Dying Up Here” and “The Get Down” as series set in a very specific period milieu. Unlike those shows, it’s presented in a fashion entirely consistent and appropriate to its era. The folks on “Pose” don’t merely reference “Dynasty,” “Falcon Crest” and “Flashdance” — the whole production seems inspired by them. As such, it’s closer in spirit to Netflix’s “GLOW.” It’s a double dose of ’80s overkill. And nobody’s holding the cheese.
TALES OF A TYCOON
A new series with a story as old as “King Lear,” “Succession” (10 p.m. Sunday, HBO, TV-MA) looks at a family torn apart as an aging media tycoon reaches his ninth decade. Viewers can speculate if this is based on the public squabbles of the Murdochs, the Redstones or even the Trumps. Or accept it as yet another voyeuristic fairy tale about the superrich being super-dreadful to each other in ways that money allows.
Our first impression of Logan Roy (Brian Cox) is that of a confused old man. He soon returns to cantankerous form, micromanaging his third wife, Marcia (Hiam Abbass), as she prepares his birthday lunch. His eldest son and presumed successor, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), arrives to consummate a deal with a tech wiz only to botch things up with a pathetic combination of arrogance and neediness.
His brash younger brother, Roman (Kieran Culkin), arrives just in time to savor his brother’s failure (and report it back to doddering old dad). Sarah Snook plays daughter Siobhan, who has chosen to leave the family business for a life in politics, but we soon learn that blood is thicker than water. Particularly when greased with infusions of cash.
Laced with obscenity and acts of indifference and cruelty, “Succession” unfolds like “Arrested Development” adapted as tragedy. The Roys get to fly around in helicopters and throw money about, but it’s not clear if they’re interesting, sympathetic or amusing enough to follow over the course of a season.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
› Showtime2 unspools all 18 episodes of last year’s “Twin Peaks” (4:35 a.m. to 10 p.m.) reboot.
› Regional coverage of Major League Baseball (7 p.m., Fox).
Kevin McDonough can be reached at kevin. tvguy@gmail.com.