Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Is a Perfect Title for Tatiana Maslany’s Clever New Thriller

(SeaPRwire) –   A standout fact-checker works like a detective, questioning every claim as though it were a case to crack. No one draws more from a Google search. Yet it is offline, performing the enduring work of journalism, that they truly shine—tracking down elusive sources, scrutinizing aged documents, and leaving their desks to verify details rushed by reporters on deadline. Often skipping byline credit, fact-checkers serve a purpose greater than ego: truth. If they were not an endangered breed, disappearing from newsroom payrolls amid industry strain, one might ask why they so seldom appear in the crime series that now rule television.

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, launching May 20 on Apple TV, fixes that omission. Centered on a single mother making ends meet as a sharp yet underappreciated magazine fact-checker for a champion reporter, this sharp crime thriller steers its story of sex work, motherhood, and isolation in genuinely unexpected directions. Its loyalty to the truth of each distinctive character keeps the show’s abrupt narrative turns believable.

Tatiana Maslany, who built a versatile name playing a dozen very different clones in Orphan Black, focuses all her skill on Pleasure’s lone lead. Freshly divorced and aiming for a long-overdue promotion, Maslany’s Paula is also bracing for a custody fight. Her ex, Karl (Jake Johnson, notably stripped of his usual gruff charm), wants to move their sweet daughter, Hazel (Nola Wallace), from New York to Boise with his new partner, Mallory (Jessy Hodges), a polished adult who makes the free-spirited Paula feel untethered. The steadiness the pair can show, compared with her mental and financial instability, makes her fear they will prevail. And that is before anyone learns she has been using her modest paychecks for intimate video chats with a camboy (Brandon Flynn’s Trevor).

Her dread of exposure turns suddenly, frighteningly real when their online meeting is broken by violence. Paula can only shout and record her screen as a masked man strikes and drags away her confidant in sex work. When she reports the abduction, a dry-toned detective (Dolly De Leon, a standout) tells her that she is likely the true target—of an extortion scheme. Sure enough, calls arrive threatening to kill Trevor and, more plausibly, to ruin her life unless she pays. When police dismiss her leads, Paula must examine the evidence to protect not only her name but the bond with the child who matters most to her.

The most vexing trait of most crime dramas is how thinly drawn their characters tend to be. Shaped more by situation than personality, they are either victims or psychopaths. If we are fortunate, we get a brilliant but troubled detective. Yet an unlikely upside to the trend is surfacing. Now that nearly every show—even comedies—must include some crime element, writers who value character are sharpening the genre. Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee, known for her riotous portraits of female friend circles, delivered another lovable crew, plus murder, in How to Get to Heaven From Belfast. Mae Martin followed her breakthrough rom-dramedy Feel Good with the cult thriller Wayward.

A veteran of the similarly offbeat but ultimately strained crime shows Sugar and Hunters, creator David J. Rosen earns his place on that roster with Pleasure. Maslany anchors a story that veers in unforeseen directions, giving Paula enough smarts, warmth, and bite to hold together. Around her, Rosen assembles an ensemble of well-paired duos, sketched in sufficient detail to give the series promise beyond its first season.

Mallory’s harshness in the custody fight begins to unsettle the indecisive Karl. De Leon’s world-weary but sharp Gonzalez endures a bolder, greener partner (Jon Michael Hill). Particularly engaging is the work-spouse spark between Paula’s younger colleagues and occasional investigative allies, each with a plan to break out of fact-checking dead ends; while Geri (Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg) is an ambitious aspiring reporter, Rudy (Charlie Hall) has accepted LSAT prep as his path. Barbed banter aside, they are more devoted to each other than to Paula. That helps explain why a woman who once seemed the quintessential cool Portland mom is now so isolated in Queens, she pays to confide in a camboy. In a world of interdependent pairs, the person who completes her—the one she will never stop fighting for—is Hazel.