Pam & Tommy

The show performs an impressive turn around the halfway mark, reeling us into the personal lives of the people at the center of the scandal and telling an even stronger story about celebrity, the paper-thin divide between publicity and privacy, and what happens when human intimacy is swallowed up by glossy headlines.

It commits to its comedic peaks with the same gritty energy it devotes to emotional lows, inviting us to ride the couple's champagne and ecstasy-driven hedonism as it portrays their love, however hastily realized, as genuine.

Pam & Tommy repeatedly acknowledges the unfair toll the sale of the tape took on Anderson’s life, even as it’s wildly entertaining most of the time. Pamela Anderson never got to have a Jane Fonda-esque second act, and maybe couldn’t have even if Rand Gauthier had never entered her husband’s life. But here, she at least gets her story retold in a far kinder and more endearing way.

Pam & Tommy turns a notorious media moment into a captivating, if undeniably tawdry, exploration of the price of celebrity in a culture where the complete loss of privacy is considered the price of fame.

There’s almost certainly a solid, two-hour movie contained within these eight episodes. We just spend too much time on meandering subplots, and too much time enduring Tommy Lee’s increasingly insufferable antics.

Whiplash settles in as the series vacillates in tone, trying all at once to be a crime thriller, a raunchy sex comedy, a critique of the media, and a reflection on a very famous woman's inner turmoil. It never figures out how to effectively tie those elements together, nor is it able to successfully make the case that Gauthier's story is just as important as Pamela's.

James is good in this; otherwise dumb … and dumber.

"Pam & Tommy" (S00, 8-eps, 45-min, Hulu) is a pretty fascinating telling of this moment in history. It's not just about their sexcapades, it's about the 90s, the early days of the internet, about their energetic/frenetic relationship, the mercurial/immature nature of Tommy against Pam's more mature/adult nature. It's also about the seedy business of porn in the early days of the internet. It's surprisingly engaging as you'll want to watch each ep in quick succession.

I liked it. At first was a bit unsure, but it had both fun elements, nostalgia about those years and serious themes and messages also in there. Overall interesting to watch.

+Excellent cast +Surprisingly good scenes of drama +Decent production budget -Some of the comedic elements feel forced and inappropriate for the dramatic elements of the show -The depth of some of headier concepts is spoilt by how on the nose certain topics are conveyed I wasnt really sure what to expect from this show but it really surprised me with the level of care that went into this at times quite dramatic depiction of the couples lives. Sadly the strength of this is often damaged by the more forced humorous sections - which work - but just detract from the potential to elevate that drama to another level (often due to distracting visual effects and bursts of soundbite dialogue reminding you its the 90's-eg mobsters talking about this great coffee they had at Starbucks etc). In that way it very much reminded me of future boy. (I think some of the same production crew worked on this) Ultimately its the performances of Stan and James that shine the brightest and this is where the strength of the show lies. I really felt connected to their love story and sad for the drama they endured as a result of the notorious tape. Overall it was a highly entertaining watch despite being just shy of its true dramatic potential.

I'm not the kind of person who gets caught up in the morbid interest of celebrity events like the ones recounted in this story and so that's why it took me so long to complete it. I think I watched episodes 5 and 6 back in May and just stopped after that. I'm finishing it now only because I wanted to take it off my list, and honestly the good performances of its cast are barely enough to justify the time invested in how completely irrelevant I found the ''true story'' that this series adapted. I don't know, maybe this kind of works are not for me.

The first episode is top notch storytelling. The illusion that the series is actually not going to focus on a couple of hicky celebrities is quite a promise. Then there is episode 2, and I couldn't care less about Pamela and Tommy Lee.