Somebody at Starz deserves a raise. “The Girlfriend Experience” is the best new TV series to happen along since the channel unleashed “Ash Vs. Evil Dead” back in October.
Amy Seimetz is a busy actress, appearing simultaneously three years ago in both AMC’s “The Killing” and HBO’s “Family Tree,” and now headed to Ridley Scott’s “Alien: Covenant” -- but she’s also an accomplished writer-director, having helmed 2002’s big-screen indie effort “Sun Don’t Shine” (garnering 94% positive reviews from critics polled on Rotten Tomatoes).
Now Seimetz is involved as writer, director, actor and producer on “The Girlfriend Experience,” a TV series version of Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 tale of a gal navigating the high-end prostitution trade. She’s collaborating with both Soderbergh (who is producing) and writer-director Lodge Kerrigan (“The Red Road,” “The Killing”).
The superb new Starz series is much better than the movie, a rare Soderbergh misfire hobbled by an inert central performance by real-life porn star Sasha Gray. It’s also better than Showtime’s similar “Secret Diary Of A Call Girl,” a British import that had a great deal going for it.
The small-screen “Girlfriend Experience” focuses on the adventures of a second-year law student who is interning at a prestigious law firm when she’s not gratifying clients.
It stars Elvis Presley’s eldest grandchild, 26-year-old Riley Keough (Nora in “Magic Mike” and Capable in “Mad Max: Fury Road”), who is charismatic, convincing and frequently naked as a brainy and adventurous lawyerette who seems confused as to which career she should be finding the most gratifying.
Her situation reminds of Kara Danvers on “Supergirl.” Her other identity seems so much more exciting and fulfilling, one sometimes wonders why she bothers showing up at the law firm to do clearance searches and cut and paste cease-and-desist letters destined to be filed unread.
One reason is the prostitution comes with perils and ugliness, and could go very wrong in the longterm. Blackmail looms when the Keough character, Christine, has a falling out with her first “booker.” One of Christine’s clients, a nerdy foreigner, is so obsessed he’s forced to take out loans so he can continue seeing her.
The excellent supporting cast includes Mary Lynn Rajskub (“24”), Paul Sparks (Mickey Doyle on “Boardwalk Empire”) as her law-firm bosses and Kate Lyn Sheil (Lisa in “House of Cards”) as a law-school classmate who draws the Keough character, Christine, into fornicating with the affluent for money.
In a nod to the Netflix model, Starz is Sunday making available all 13 first-season episodes of “The Girlfriend Experience” via On Demand and the Starz Play app.
… This is a show for our moment. … Last year [Keough] appeared as one of the enslaved brides in Mad Max: Fury Road, and she brings to this role a similar affect–rage cloaked in placidity. Watching her give herself over to paranoia (installing a home camera system, for instance) is riveting stuff.... More than any other recent show that’s dealt with web culture—looking at you, House of Cards—The Girlfriend Experience intuitively grasps the manner in which constantly available information can transform lives. …
… Keough is excellent, and the show's style — scenes mostly shot in natural light, conversation kept to a bare minimum — can be hypnotic. But there isn't remotely enough story to justify the length of this season, even with the episodes only being 30 minutes or less. …
... even when it’s boring, it’s absorbing, like an art video playing in the lobby of a boutique hotel. … It’s admirable, ambitious and hard to love. But then, love is not what “The Girlfriend Experience” is selling. …
... I will pause here to give all female law students past and present, including the one currently running for president, a moment to briefly wonder why no one ever offered them an envelope stuffed with Benjamins just to have cocktails and also to stop laughing. Not, it must be said, at Keough, who gives "The Girlfriend Experience" the small amount of allure that it has. The camera loves her, and it should. At its best, the series documents an emotional shape-shifter, and Keough uses her admirably expressive face and body to convey a journey through the depths and shallows in a way that's frankly far beyond the confines of the script. …
... The honesty carries into the final scene of the series, which will stay with you. Despite her successes, her new lifestyle has had repercussions in both her professional and personal life. Was it worth it? Is she fulfilled? Are we?
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
... Not to take a thing away from Seimetz and Kerrigan — their writing and direction are superb — but the series evokes some of the sensibility of Soderbergh’s career-making 1989 film, “sex, lies and videotape.” Both films center on unemotional sexual connections. …
... in its own muted way, “The Girlfriend Experience” won me over. … Once I got used to the numbed-out vibe, I found the show to be an elegant, haunting, fascinating, and timely nightmare. … Keough is just right for the role. She projects wide-eyed innocence as she finds her way into the world of prostitution, but she also seems empty enough to take it on without a lot of emotional damage, and ambitious enough to learn very quickly how the job works and what the men who hire her are looking for. …
... At first, the show feels a trifle frustrating, inasmuch as Christine dives into this strange new world without divulging almost anything about who she is, or wants to be. Viewers see a lot of her body (and the sex scenes are graphic and frequent), but they’re treated to precious little regarding what’s going on inside her head. Gradually, though, that becomes its own kind of mystery, and helps foster a pervasive sense of unease, one that makes this “Experience” feel far more ambitious than something like Showtime’s “The Secret Diary of a Call Girl.” There’s also a pointed distinction between the way Christine is essentially dismissed at work — in what amounts to her secret identity — and the power she wields over titans of industry upon donning her costume as Chelsea. …
... While Christine's work at the law firm creates an interesting secondary plot (with nice turns by co-stars Paul Sparks and Mary Lynn Rajskub), this series is really about having sex and getting paid for it — and there's eye candy galore, as expected. Seen from that perspective, The Girlfriend Experience doesn't seem particularly inventive, even though the writing is strong and Keough is a magnetic presence precisely because she knows how to make Christine interesting as a character and not just a body; Keough's expressive face is able to infuse the series with something deeper — she makes Christine at once coldly selfish and then believably alive to the men in her life, a manipulative lie that gives her a sense of power and control. …
8 p.m. Sunday. Starz.
