Pam & Tommy: What the Must Watch reviewers think
Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.
This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan review Pam & Tommy on Disney+. Lily James and Sebastian Stan star in the miniseries about how THAT tape was stolen and spread online in the nineties.
Disney+
Scott says: “It looks, with real heart, at the concept of shame”
"I watched the whole thing in one sitting! There is a lot to this story that I didn’t know. I knew that there had been a tape uploaded onto the internet in the 90s, but I didn’t know that the tape had been stolen from them. It was taken from a safe after an argument with a carpenter during a makeover on their mansion.
"This series explores looks at that ripple effect of the internet and how something uploaded can be on there forever. It looks, with real heart, at the concept of shame. One thing that becomes apparent is Pamela Anderson is made to feel an extraordinary amount of shame with very little public sympathy.
"If you contrast that to two decades later, when there was a lot of invasion of privacy for celebrities, a lot of hacking of their phones and photos and shared online … there was a national conversation afterwards on the damaging effects it causes. For Pamela, there was nothing.
"This show is entertaining too and it has got a very light hearted tone.’’
Disney+
Hayley says: “I like that even the craziest stuff is based on some kind of truth"
"It’s kind of a like an American Crime Story without it actually being within the American Crime Story canon. The way the leads are done up - they completely disappear and become Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. I don’t know how Lily James has managed it, she's the opposite of that in real life.
"It’s sort of cartoonish in its tone. There are some scenes we can’t talk about — in fact most of the scenes we can’t talk about. But there is one scene in the second episode that gets at what I mean about the cartoonish thing: where Jason Mantzoukas voices a character having a chat with Tommy Lee in the bathroom.
"I thought this was an unrealistic, silly scene but apparently it was taken right out of Tommy Lee’s autobiography. I like that even the craziest stuff is based on some kind of truth or pre-existing story, because most of this story is unbelievable: even down to the fact that they got married 96 hours after knowing each other.
"It is very watchable. However, the whole thing is being made without Pamela Anderson’s co-operation, so even though it’s a fun watch, it does give this whole thing a strange bitter aftertaste. Essentially, it’s a drama about the removal of a women’s consent, being made without a women’s consent. That hangs over it like a cloud."
Disney+
The first three episodes of Pam & Tommy are available now on Disney+ with new episodes being released weekly.
Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds and all other good podcast providers.
This week, the team speak to BBC Three controller, Fiona Campbell about the channel returning to TV. Plus, reviews of The Teacher on Channel 5 and The Tinder Swindler on Netflix.
