★★★ (3 out of 4)
Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) plays Paula, an almost divorced mom and overworked fact checker who relieves stress by paying an online camboy named Trevor (Brandon Flynn) to talk to her. Talking her into orgasm is secondary. After about 30 seconds of watching this twink wave his willy, Paula craves real intimacy. Does Trevor think her cramped New York apartment looks livable enough to convince her ex that their daughter can stay there on weekends? Looks matter. She also needs Trevor, who she calls “young and strong and smooth like a dolphin,” to tell her she’s not (her words) “old and broken.” He tells her she’s not old. So you can see that bitter comic embers will have their place in this tale of sex, lies, digicam tape and murder centered on a child custody battle.
And so begins “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed,” a sex farce from creator David J. Rosen that quickly morphs into a workplace comedy, a treatise on urban loneliness and a wonky whodunit when Paula’s phone camera catches a masked stranger come up from behind Trevor and choke him to death. Paula sees it all. Or does she?
That’s the show, coming at you on Apple TV+ in 10 parts that run from half an hour to 45 minutes each. It’s a lot of shows in one, which can throw you. But stick with this series even when the pleasures it delivers are less than maximal. Acting dynamo Maslany guides us through one woman’s personal hell that suddenly becomes shockingly relatable.
Let’s start with her domestic situation—a tense custody battle with her ex-husband, Karl (Jake Johnson). This deceptively personable dude wants to move their eight-year-old daughter, Hazel (a sweet, sassy Nola Wallace), to Boise, Idaho, where Karl and soon-to-be new wife Mallory (Jessy Hodges) plan to settle. Not while Paula has the breath to stop it. Clearly, Karl and Mal will dig up any dirt they can find on Paula.
So her online sex with Trevor could be a problem. To bolster her image as a responsible parent, Paula could sure use a dangled promotion as a magazine factchecker, a chopping block position in a steadily dying publishing industry. Her younger colleagues at work, Geri and Rudy, played with snappy guile by Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg and Charlie Hall, snipe about Paula behind her back.
Just let bombshell Tatiana Maslany be your guide as this terrific, twisty thriller spins your head around six ways from Sunday.
The plot thickens when Paula finds reasons to believe that someone has offed Trevor for real. She has it on camera! The police, in the cunning, captivating person of detective Sofia Gonzales (deadpan diva supreme Dolly de Leon), tell Paula she’s been scammed, especially when she gets calls at work that Trevor will die if Paula doesn’t send 50 grand.
That’s when Paula investigates on her own. TV’s first factchecker hero (it’s about time) tracks Trevor down in his Queens neighborhood by using all the resources she gathered in a line of work that pays her to notice everything. It’s here in these early episodes, directed by new century “Halloween” maestro David Gordon Green, that “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” hits the pedal on suspense as Paula plays super-sleuth and gets in over her head as her skills take her places the cops never investigated.
That’s when Paula encounters a stranger, played with devilish charm and bone-chilling menace by “White Lotus” Emmy winner Murray Bartlett, and the series begins to uncover layers of conspiracy and deception too juicy to spoil here.
Just let bombshell Maslany be your guide as this terrific, twisty thriller spins your head around six ways from Sunday. You may be disappointed that “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” is not the kinky “Kramer vs Kramer” it had earlier promised. But in its own devious, diabolical way—the curveball ending is killer—this series steers you into dark corners you’ll never see coming. That I do guarantee.