Where to find it: Paramount+
Length: Eight 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: A young woman raised on QVC dreams of selling cheap trinkets
Recommendation rating: 4/5
What I like about it: Vanessa Bayer, Jenifer Lewis, great character work, satire/ exposé of home shopping and sales work
What I don’t like about it: it’s not unmissable, the characters are good individually but rarely click together into any kind of dynamic
Review:
The premise of this one didn’t interest me much but the pilot did. We’re introduced to a young girl who has clearly been a hospital inpatient for some time, the scene is dark and grey but she is captivated by a dull light from the corner of the room: the falsely happy, friendly and elegant world of a home shopping network. Being too young to understand the artifice, she idolises the one happy presence in her small, sad world. Smash cut to her as a sheltered young woman, retaining many childlike qualities and a strong desire to not be “the cancer girl” anymore, she auditions for a role as a sales-host at the network which she spent so many hours watching. She clearly has a talent – her bubbly, enthusiastic and friendly nature make her a natural fit for the role – but she anxiously stumbles over her words a lot. Nonetheless she is hired and excitedly goes to spend her first day in the TV world of her childhood, only to find that behind the scenes it’s all business and bitchy backbiting. We see her thrown for a loop for the rest of the pilot as her naïveté is shattered in real-time and at the end, she makes a really bad decision that creates interest for future episodes.
This is clearly very well-informed by creator/writer/star Vanessa Bayer, who herself went from having childhood leukemia to being in showbusiness and that lends a lot of heart to a show that otherwise would feel tacky and exploitative. It’s not the funniest comedy on modern TV/streaming but in an age when comedy shows are mixing a lot with drama, it’s not the worst balance and is even good for a laugh-out-loud moment an episode. It’s getting quite unfavourable reviews which I think is undeserved and likely due to the show’s rather feminine appeal.
Content notes (may contain spoilers): cancer comes up a lot, some ableist slurs