Apple TV and sex workers — who’d have thought they’d make such a delightful pairing? Earlier this year, the streaming service released the drama series Margo’s Got Money Troubles, based on the book of the same name, which follows a young woman as she turns to cam work to support herself and her new baby.
It’s a great show, and you definitely should check it out. That said, I should point out that this article isn’t about that Apple TV show; it’s about a different one involving the same sorta thing — and it involves blackmail, fraud and murder. That sounds heavy, I know, but I assure you, the show I am talking about is a comedy. A dark comedy, mind you, but still.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is the program I’m talking about. The series drops new episodes each Wednesday on Apple TV and is in the middle of its first season. If everything I’ve said thus far has piqued your interest, keep reading, because this here’s a show you should be paying attention to.
This Apple TV Horror Comedy Is Fun, Frightful and One of the Best Shows of the Year
Paula is not having the good time she was promised.
The gist of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is pretty simple: A divorced mom who falls for a webcam performer gets involved in a precarious (and very violent) situation after she witnesses Trevor (Brandon Flynn), the camboy in question, get attacked during one of their video sessions.
Tatiana Maslany plays Paula, the mother in question, and, as we’ve seen from her stellar work in Orphan Black — where she played 17 different characters — she has the fortitude to carry a high-concept series on her back. And hoo-golly, she puts in the work on this one.
Her performance is a layered mix of flawed, fearless and feral. Paula is a woman reeling from her pending divorce, striving to prove she can provide a normal life for her daughter, focused on delivering top-notch work as a fact checker at the local paper, all while struggling to reconcile the act of violence she witnessed during a moment of digital intimacy.
The attack turns out to be a scam, though, and soon Paula is juggling threatening calls from people demanding money, or else, and inquiries by unhelpful police detectives assigned to her case. So, as someone who works with facts daily, she takes matters into her own hands and does some messy investigative work, only to find herself not just in the middle of a blackmail scheme but a murder mystery to boot.
Jake Johnson plays Paula’s ex.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed doesn’t tread lightly with its subject matter, whether we’re talking about the sex work storyline, the violence strewn throughout each episode or the compounding emotional trauma Paula is subjected to as she tries to keep it together.
I should probably remind you that this is a comedy. It’s got a similar vibe to, say, HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, which also follows a character who gets sucked into a murder conspiracy and must make unsavory decisions. The levity comes through the show’s quick-cut edits, the brash techno soundtrack that accompanies the opening credits and the jarring attention to random voices and phone noises.
You could easily read that sentence and think I’m talking about a horror series, but the line between laughs and scares is thin. With David Gordon Green behind the camera — a director who has worked heavily in both genres — this all makes sense.
Murray Bartlett, so brilliant in the first season of The White Lotus, is the villain here.
Then there’s the rest of the show’s cast. Murray Bartlett is a killer, literally and figuratively, and his performance, which walks the sociopathic line beautifully between sinister and sincere, feels effortless. Jake Johnson plays Karl, Paula’s ex, and strays from his normal comedic schtick to show a dramatic side audiences rarely get to see.
The show’s ensemble is rounded out by standout performances by Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg and Charlie Hall, who play Paula’s gossipy coworkers Geri and Rudy — a duo that gets involved in Paula’s whole mess — and Dolly de Leon, who cuts through the nonsense as the delightfully deadpan Det. Sofia Gonzalez.
As I said earlier, the series is still in the midst of its first season run, so I’m not here to talk about the direction of the story or its future in a potential season 2. That said, it has left enough breadcrumbs and unraveled enough layers to hint at a larger conspiracy lurking beneath the crimes Paula is tangled up in. The show is addictive, so I’d be surprised if we didn’t get more episodes down the line.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed never gets lost in the emotional depths of these characters, which is another way the series stays firmly in its comedy lane. It’s a unique murder mystery lifted by the character work of its cast and the unfortunate circumstances that help build out this story world. It’s breezy, but also brutal. Hilarious, but also horrific. And since each episode runs 30-40 minutes, it’s a perfect little summertime binge.
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