Pam & Tommy review: The sex-tape drama feels exploitative

Starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan, the Hulu miniseries about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's leaked video is bound to be talked about. But it's grubby stuff, writes Laura Martin.

In recent years, as the 90s have receded into the past, so TV has begun to revisit some of the era's most notorious scandals – from Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct with then-intern Monica Lewinsky, to the trial of OJ Simpson, and the stormy break-up of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Perhaps, then, it was to be expected that at some point, the gaze would fall again on one of the biggest celebrity news stories of that decade: the release of a stolen sex tape featuring two of the most popular stars of that era, rocker Tommy Lee, drummer of Mötley Crüe, and actor Pamela Anderson, best known for her role in the primetime beachside drama, Baywatch. That is the episode at the centre of hotly-anticipated new miniseries Pam & Tommy.

More like this:

– The Gilded Age is a period drama hit

– The best TV show you missed in 2021

– Nine TV shows to watch in January

There can be a point to these kind of lookbacks beyond salaciousness. The benefit of hindsight, so the adage goes, is that it is 20/20. And even if not crystal clear, then retellings of pop culture events can certainly allow for showing how the "truth" of them may have been misrepresented. American Crime Story: Impeachment recently did this admirably by not only involving Lewinsky in the dramatised account of her story, but by giving her an executive producer role. She told Vanity Fair that, prior to signing on to the production, showrunner Ryan Murphy had said to her: "Nobody should tell your story but you, and it's kind of gross if they do."

By contrast, however, Pam & Tommy can claim no equivalent moral high ground – for the wronged woman in this instance has been afforded no such privilege in the retelling of a devastating and excruciating moment in her personal history. In an interview with Variety, writer Robert Siegel said that he had reached out to Anderson with no reply. "She's chosen not to engage," he said. "So we've respected her desire not to be involved." Lily James, who plays Anderson, attempted to make contact with her too, telling Porter Magazine: "I was really hopeful that she would be involved. I wish it had been different." Anderson's silence was deafening, yet onwards the project continued. 

Certainly, Anderson's lack of involvement makes Pam & Tommy a bit of an odd beast from the very start. For, while James has claimed that the show is intended to give Anderson "the justice she deserves", without her voice underlying the script, it can't help but feel exploitative, as if once again the entertainment industry is profiting off her shaming. 

In the spirit of examining the events from different angles, however, the series opens with the backstory of a character who won't be known to many: Rand Gauthier, the hapless electrician who worked for Lee, and who accidentally stole the tape after looting his safe in revenge for not being paid, before trying (and failing) to cash in on it. He is played by a mulleted Seth Rogen – also an executive producer on the series – and, given the show is based on a 2014 Rolling Stone article revealing Gauthier's involvement, it could ostensibly be called Pam, Tommy & Rand Too. Gauthier has ample screen time – there are even flashbacks to his childhood traumas – to build up the character's layers, presumably in a bid to make viewers sympathetic to his motives. Rogen plays him like many of his other loser man-child roles, as a down-on-his-luck dude with a permanent hangdog expression – that is, when he's not seething about the injustice of how his life has played out. As the series progresses, it shifts between timelines and characters, with the opener centred on Gauthier leading up to the theft, followed by episodes focusing on Anderson's and Lee's joint story, then Anderson's perspective alone, before it starts to cut between all three of its leads' viewpoints again.

Of course, the producers likely know that the reason many viewers will be tuning in is the same reason people bought the tabloid magazines filled with rumours and gossip about the pair at the time, or even watched the sex tape itself: to get an illicit, voyeuristic look into the private lives of two of the then biggest celebrities on the planet. It's why the uncanny first-look pictures of James – fresh from her very different role as bright young thing Linda Radlett in period drama, The Pursuit of Love – as Anderson and Sebastian Stan – last seen as Bucky Barnes in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – as the tattooed and pierced Lee went viral when they dropped: there's a presumed thrill in the show's eerie recreation of the couple, per se. The transformations are genuinely incredible, James' especially: throughout the series you'll have to remind yourself it isn't actually Anderson in the starring role.

A whirlwind romance

Episode two contains the money shot for both director and viewer; the much-reported first meeting of Lee and Anderson in 1995, and their ensuing wild, warp-speed romance. We see how Lee infamously went up to Pamela and licked her face from "chin to temple", as he recalled in his band's autobiography, The Dirt, before their shotgun wedding on a Cancun beach a few days later, with Anderson dressed in a white string bikini, propelled them into the rock 'n' roll hall of fame. This was a whole new era of Hollywood Babylon. It's impossible not to be caught up in the giddiness and the hedonism of these scenes on screen, with these two A-listers wildly grinding jaws and hips on the dancefloor, spraying champagne and doing body shots to the soundtrack of some seriously shonky Euro-dance bangers. In a time where the complaint is often that stars are too media-trained, the show seems to imply, isn't this how we want our celebrities to behave?

But the episode then jumps to what will surely be the most talked about moment in the entire series, as bizarre as it is amusing: for while full-frontal male nudity on TV may no longer be taboo, Pam & Tommy may be the first prestige TV series to feature a talking penis – voiced by Jason Mantzoukas, in what must be one of the oddest credits to appear on any actor's CV. "I'm in love, bro!" a naked Lee says to his swinging member while looking in the bathroom mirror, to which it replies with lewd words of discouragement. Again, truth is stranger than fiction, though, as writer Siegel has explained how this episode was taken directly from Lee's autobiography, Tommyland, and the passage where he describes how, high on drugs, he had a tête-à-tête with his genitals.

While this is a funny scene in itself, it feeds into the show's central problem – which is that tonally, it is all over the place. It can't decide whether it's a heist comedy where we're meant to root for the mistreated underdog, Gauthier; a sensationalist, soapy account of a rock 'n' roll love story; or, as it aims to swing toward in the final episodes, an empathetic, much more sober take on events, as seen through the eyes of the female victim. 

Stan does a solid job of portraying Lee as a man driven by the excesses of life, though he's the only character of the three leads who isn't afforded a flashback, so feels slightly less rounded as a result. Meanwhile the character's rapid switching from love-bombing to menacing, snarling bully serves to make clear he's a nasty piece of work (that he was later convicted of assaulting Anderson is only mentioned only as a footnote in the end credits). James as Anderson has clearly put the work in on the accent and mannerisms, but at times overworks the pouting and forced coquettishness, as if Anderson believes she's still on a Playboy photoshoot while cleaning up a mess on the kitchen floor, or while watching The King & I in bed with Lee. 

By the time we reach episode six, which acts as Anderson's origin story of sorts, it's hammered home how little autonomy she had in her life – and over her body – back then, and how much of it was controlled by men. When the sex tape makes the leap from dodgy VHS bootleggers to the all-new phenomenon of the world wide web ("What's a website?" one character asks), she is mortified, all colour draining out of her Californian tan when she realises millions of people would now be watching her most intimate moments.

We learn that Anderson had a miscarriage – something that the show seems to suggest may be caused by the stress of the sex tape being leaked – and then she is subjected to a humiliating deposition when she files a lawsuit against Penthouse to stop them running the stolen images in their magazine. James comes into her own in these legal-heavy scenes as we see how equally surreal and mortifying the situation was.

To top it all off, she cries, she's "a walking punchline" to the nation's chat show comedy writers. It's interesting the series opens with a recreation of the famous interview Anderson did with Jay Leno in 1996 where he mockingly asks her about the tape: "What's it like to have that kind of exposure?" though it's not until episode seven of Pam & Tommy that we get her answer. "It's horrible," Anderson, who was five months' pregnant at the time, says. "To have something so intimate stolen from you, private from inside your marriage, that's taken without permission and exposed to the world… It's devastating, it's devastating to us." 

However it's ironic that the creators of Pam & Tommy at once seem to want to sympathise with Anderson, while also being intent on digging up a traumatic personal story of hers. The show will end up being a big conversation-starter, most likely, but it feels like grubby stuff that, sadly, has facilitated the real-life victim being unwantedly pushed back into the headlines for an episode she'd likely rather forget.

★★☆☆☆

Pam & Tommy airs on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK from 2 February.

Love film and TV? Join BBC Culture Film and TV Club on Facebook, a community for cinephiles all over the world.

If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.