You might not be too familiar with the story of Pam and Tommy. Sure, you’ve probably heard at some point about the Baywatch star or her Motley Cruë drummer husband, but – for those not ingratiated in 90’s pop-culture – the tale of their infamous sex-tape and its effect on modern culture might not be as well known. And as a fun retelling of that inherently weird and whacky story, show-runner Robert Siegel and his gang of top-tier directors (Craig Gillespie, Lake Bell, Gwyneth Horder-Payton & Hannah Fidell) deliver in almost every way, capitalising on phenomenal performances from series leads Sebastian Stan and a transformed Lily James. It is only when Pam and Tommy tries to move beyond the fun that it falters; its attempts to go deeper into the psyches of its leads never feeling like they coalesce into anything other than a messy jumble of admittedly well-intentioned ideas.
After a whirlwind romance and impromptu proposal abroad, Tommy Lee (Stan) and Pamela Anderson (James) suddenly find themselves back in the States, newly married and committed to starting a new life together in Tommy’s Californian mansion. When contractor Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen) is wrongly fired by Tommy – who refuses to pay the man for renovation work he has already completed – he becomes enraged, breaking into the mansion late one night and making off with a safe full of valuables. Perhaps the most valuable of these items is a sex-tape made by the newlyweds on their honeymoon; the possession of which triggers an idea in Rand to release the tape to the world and make back the money owed to him tenfold. As the production of the tape begins to snowball beyond Rand’s control, it drives a wedge into Pamela and Tommy’s burgeoning marriage; with each at a different point in their career and affected by the tape in vastly different ways.
On the surface level, Pam and Tommy operates as a fairly straightforward recounting of the story of the sex tape’s theft and subsequent explosion in popularity, leading to what many believe is the rise of internet pornography. It’s a wise decision considering how unbelievable the story already is, made even more so by the larger than life way these characters operate in the real world. Tommy is the perfect example of this and Sebastian Stan delivers a surprisingly endearing portrayal of someone so deeply flawed as to fire workers after weeks of work and then refuse to pay them a dime. The show posits that there is a decent person buried deep beneath all the crazy antics and Stan is able to draw this out in the quieter moments with Pamela in the tender way he approaches and looks at her. Tommy is also where the show is able to have the most fun, shifting into the utterly fantastical in a hilarious scene where Tommy is given a pep talk by… his penis. It’s a brilliant deconstruction of the way Tommy views himself as the biggest man in every room despite his many flaws and is the rare below-the-surface moment that actually works in adding more to a character.
For the most part, these attempt to go deeper into Pam and Tommy’s psyches fall short. Pamela’s arc in particular is primed to get under the skin of an actress that could have been so much bigger if the circumstances were different, but every time the show delivers a powerful scene for Pam, it is almost always undercut by a decision to pivot away from her entirely. One particularly powerful scene taking place at a traffic intersection is the exception here – James is continuously excellent as the Baywatch star, mimicking everything from her physicality right down to vocal cues flawlessly – but this is a stark contrast against all the meaningless backstory of Anderson’s famous flop Barbarella. You get the sense that despite the excellent performances from James and Stan and all the absolutely amazing prosthetics and make-up work that has gone into transforming them, Siegel doesn’t have total faith in this story being enough to carry the series.
In fact the opening episode barely features the duo at all, honing in on Rogen’s disgruntled worker for almost the entire run-time and cutting back to his moral dilemma far too often throughout the series. For his part Rogen is excellent in conveying Rand’s torn conscience and his interactions with Nick Offerman’s hilariously grimy porn producer are consistently hilarious, but for a show named after its titular pairing, Pam and Tommy seems hard-pressed to create much more out of this narrative at times. The inference that this whole endeavour was the start of the internet pornography boom is an interesting side-story sure, but feels like such a distraction that you begin to think the show has run out of steam long before its end, and like Pam and Tommy’s marriage, is just treading water until it is all over.
Pam and Tommy is a breezy trip through 90’s nostalgia anchored by two incredible performances from Sebastian Stan and Lily James that bring these larger-than-life personalities to the screen in a way we have never seen before. It gets bogged down in the specifics of its story and side-characters a little too often – distracting from the central duo in the process – but its light tone and kinetic pacing make for an always enjoyable, if inconsistent watch. Let this be a lesson to anyone out there thinking of short-changing Seth Rogen.
Pam and Tommy stars Sebastian Stan, Lily James, Seth Rogen, Taylor Schilling, Fred Hechinger, Paul Ben-Victor, Andrew Dice Clay & Nick Offerman – Streaming on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in Australia now.
