Apple TV’s New Camboy Crime Thriller Is A Great Way To Indulge In The Summer
Apple TV and prostitutes — who would have thought they would make such a sweet pairing? Earlier this year, the streaming service released a drama series Margo Has Money Problemsbased on the book of the same name, follows a young woman as she turns to cam work to support herself and her new baby.
It’s a great show, and you should definitely check it out. That said, I must point out that this article does not that Apple TV program; it’s about a different one involving the same thing — and it includes fraud, embezzlement and murder. That sounds harsh, I know, but I assure you, the show I’m talking about is a comedy. A dark comedy, mind you, but still.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is the program I am talking about. The series launches new episodes every Wednesday Apple TV and it is in its prime. If everything I’ve said so far has piqued your interest, read on, because this is a show worth paying attention to.
Read more: This Comedy Horror for Apple TV is Fun, Scary and One of the Best Shows of the Year
Paula no longer has the good time she was promised.
The premise of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is pretty simple: A divorced mom looking for a webcam player gets involved in a serious (and very violent) situation after she sees Trevor (Brandon Flynn), the camboy in question, attacked during one of their video sessions.
Tatiana Maslany plays Paula, the mother in question, and, as we saw in her amazing work in Orphan Black — where he played 17 different characters — he has the ability to carry a high-concept series on his back. And hoo-golly, put some work into this.
His performance is a layered combination of flawed, fearless and feral. Paula is a woman worried about her pending divorce, trying to prove that she can give her daughter a normal life, focusing on delivering a high-quality job as a fact-checker for the local paper, while still struggling to reconcile the act of violence she witnessed during digital intimacy.
The attack turns out to be a scam, however, and Paula is soon answering threatening phone calls from people demanding money, as well as questions from unhelpful police detectives assigned to her case. So, as someone who works with facts every day, he takes it upon himself and does some dirty investigative work, only to find himself in the middle of not only a conspiracy but a murder mystery to begin with.
Jake Johnson plays Paula’s ex.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed doesn’t tread lightly on its subject matter, whether it’s the sex work story, the violence that permeates each episode or the emotional trauma that Paula experiences as she tries to keep it together.
I should probably remind you that this is a joke. It has a similar vibe to, say, HBO Max’s Flight Attendant, which also follows a character who gets caught up in a murder plot and has to make some unsatisfying decisions. The levity comes through the show’s brisk editing, the brash techno soundtrack that accompanies the opening credits and the surprising attention to random voices and phone sounds.
You could easily read that sentence and think I’m talking about a horror series, but the line between laughter and horror is thin. With David Gordon Green behind the camera — a director who has worked extensively in both genres — this all makes sense.
Murray Bartlett, brilliant in the first season of The White Lotus, is the villain here.
Then there are the other actors of the show. Murray Bartlett is a murdererliterally and figuratively, and his performance, which walks the sociopathic line well between evil and sincere, feels powerless. Jake Johnson plays Karl, Paula’s ex, and breaks out of his usual schtick to show the audience a rare sidekick.
The show’s cast is rounded out by the stellar cast of Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg and Charlie Hall, who play Paula’s gossipy co-workers Geri and Rudy — the two who get involved in all of Paula’s dirt — and Dolly de Leon, who cuts through the nonsense as the delightfully deadpan Det. Sofia Gonzalez.
As I said at the beginning, the series is still in the middle of its first season, so I’m not here to talk about the direction of the story or its future around season 2. That said, enough breadcrumbs have been left and enough layers have been revealed to hint at a larger conspiracy that lies beneath the crime Paula is embroiled in. The show is very addictive, and so is the episode.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed never gets lost in the emotional depth of these characters, which is another way the series stays firmly in its comedic lane. That’s right a unique murder mystery it is elevated by the character work of its characters and the negative situations that help build this story world. It’s breezy, but it’s also brutal. It’s funny, but also terrifying. And with each episode lasting 30-40 minutes, it’s a little summer binge.
