A great fact-checker is a detective, interrogating every statement as if it’s a case to be solved. No one can get more out of a Google search. But it’s offline, doing the timeless work of journalism, where they really excel—pinning down cagey sources, poring over yellowing documents, leaving their desks to confirm descriptions dashed off by reporters on deadline. Often forgoing the glory of a byline, fact-checkers serve a purpose nobler than ego: truth. If they weren’t an endangered species, vanishing from the payrolls of newsrooms in crisis, you’d wonder why we so rarely see them in the crime shows that now dominate TV.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, premiering May 20 on Apple TV, corrects this oversight. With a single mom eking out a living as an excellent but undervalued magazine fact-checker for a hero, this witty crime thriller takes its tale of sex work, motherhood, and loneliness in genuinely surprising directions. Yet its fidelity to the truth of each idiosyncratic character makes the show’s whiplash narrative feel believable.
Tatiana Maslany, who made her versatile reputation playing a dozen very different clones in Orphan Black, channels all her talent into Pleasure’s singular protagonist. Newly divorced and angling for an overdue promotion, Maslany’s Paula is also gearing up for a custody battle. Her ex, Karl (Jake Johnson, impressively devoid of his signature gruff charm), wants to move their adorable daughter, Hazel (Nola Wallace), from New York to Boise with his new partner, Mallory (Jessy Hodges), a polished grown-up who makes the bohemian Paula feel like a mess. The stability the couple can demonstrate, relative to her psychological and financial precarity, makes her worry they’ll win. And that’s without anyone knowing she’s been spending her meager paychecks on sexy video-chat sessions with a camboy (Brandon Flynn’s Trevor).
Her fear of being exposed becomes suddenly, terrifyingly real when their virtual date is interrupted by violence. Paula can only scream and film her screen as a masked man beats and drags away her sex-worker confidant. When she reports the abduction, a deadpan police detective (Dolly De Leon, a highlight) informs her that she’s likely the real victim—of an extortion scam. Sure enough, calls come in threatening to kill Trevor and, more plausibly, ruin her life if she doesn’t pay up. When the cops shrug off her tips, Paula must scrutinize the evidence to save not just her reputation, but her relationship with the child who means everything to her.
The most frustrating thing about the preponderance of crime dramas is how flat their characters tend to be. Defined by circumstances more than personality, they are either victims or psycho killers. If we’re lucky, we get a brilliant but troubled detective. Yet an unlikely upside to the trend is emerging. Now that just about every show—even comedies—must have some element of crime, writers who care about characters are improving the genre. Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee, known for her raucous portraits of female friend groups, gave us another lovable crew, plus murder, in How to Get to Heaven From Belfast. Mae Martin followed up their breakthrough rom-dramedy Feel Good with the cult thriller Wayward.
A veteran of the similarly offbeat but fatally flawed crime shows Sugar and Hunters, creator David J. Rosen earns his way onto that list with Pleasure. Maslany is the dynamic center of a story that twists in unexpected directions, giving Paula enough intelligence, warmth, and edginess to make her character cohere. Around her, Rosen builds an ensemble out of well-matched duos, drawn in enough detail to give the series potential beyond its first season.
Mallory’s ruthlessness in the custody fight begins to alarm wishy-washy Karl. De Leon’s jaded but shrewd Gonzalez endures a brasher, greener partner (Jon Michael Hill). Especially fun is the work-spouse flirtation between Paula’s younger colleagues and sometimes investigative partners, each of whom has a plan to escape the dead end of fact-checking; while Geri (Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg) is an ambitious aspiring reporter, Rudy (Charlie Hall) has resigned himself to LSAT prep. Barbed banter aside, they’re more loyal to each other than to Paula. Which helps to explain why a woman who once seemed to be the ultimate cool Portland mom is now so lonely in Queens, she pays to confide in a camboy. In a world of symbiotic twosomes, the person who completes her—the one she’ll never stop fighting for—is Hazel.
