Hulu’s ‘Pam & Tommy’: an entertaining intrusion

Above : Lily James and Sebastian Stan star in the Hulu miniseries “Pam & Tommy.” (Photo/Hulu)

Miniseries review : “Pam & Tommy,” developed by Robert Siegel, starring Lily James, Sebastian Stan, Seth Rogen. Streaming through Hulu.

Privacy is a valued commodity, particularly in the Internet era. After all, most of us these days conduct both our social and business lives online. And reports of hackers accessing our personal information tend to be scary.

Just last week, a notorious hacker group claimed to have breached Microsoft , though it wasn’t clear – at least initially – that any user information had been exposed. Not so in the past when such data affected tens if not hundreds of millions of us.

Nobody likes to be exposed. Which is ironic because so many of us like to watch shows in which lives are ruthlessly examined – and in many cases torn apart.

So-called reality shows, which tend to be heavily scripted, are one example. But even more so are the movies and television shows that attempt to portray real people and the events that they live through. Take one of the movies that was nominated for the 2022 Best Picture Oscar, “King Richard,” which explores the life of Richard Williams – father of tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams.

That film is just the beginning, though. In the Best Actor category alone, along with Will Smith who won for portraying Williams, other nominees taking on the lives of real people include Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz in “Being the Ricardos” and Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson in “tick … tick … BOOM!”

And for Best Actress? How about eventual winner Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye Baker in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball in “Being the Ricardos” or Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in “Spencer” ? And that doesn’t even include Lady Gaga who made such an impression playing Patrizia Reggiani in “House of Gucci.”

As for television, whole miniseries are being devoted to fictionalizing the lives of real people – even as some of those people are being tried for alleged crimes. Amanda Seyfried and Naveen Andrews as Elizabeth Holmes and Sunni Balwani in “The Dropout,” for example. Renée Zellweger as convicted killer Pam Hupp in “The Thing About Pam,” for another. Or even Jared Leto as WeWork co-founder Michael Neumann in “WeCrashed.”

But perhaps the most egregious, if at the same time entertaining, example might be “Pam & Tommy,” the eight-part Hulu miniseries that strives to tell the story of movie and television star Pamela Anderson (played by an almost unrecognizable Lily James ) and her one-time husband, Motley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee (played by Sebastian Stan ).

What makes Anderson and Lee interesting, beyond her “Baywatch” TV and “Barb Wire” movie career, and his heavy-metal music success, is of course the notorious tape – the sex tape – that the two recorded early in their relationship. The one that ended up being reported stolen then first sold as VHS tapes on the Internet, a novelty at the time (circa mid-1990s), and later streamed online through a subscription service.

Based on a Rolling Stone magazine article, and developed for Hulu by Robert Siegel, “Pam & Tommy” is several things at once. It’s a love story, showing how Anderson and Lee first met, fell hard for one another – and the subsequent ups and downs that followed. It’s a revenge tale, keying on the man who claims to have stolen the tape (Rand Gauthier, played by Seth Rogen ) to get back at Lee for firing him and stiffing him on carpentry work he had done.

But even more, “Pam & Tommy” is a cautionary tale. It shows just how ruthless people can be, especially those in positions of power, particularly men over young women – men such as magazine publishers Hugh Hefner and Bob Guccione.

For the record, the series – directed by a quartet of men and women – does feature good acting, especially by the three mentioned above. And Anderson in particular ends up looking good, sadder but wiser.

Still, it’s a valid question: Does any kind of artistic quality merit such intrusion, even of a public couple? George Orwell warned us about Big Brother But he’s not who worries me. It’s everybody else.

An edited version of this review was broadcast previously on Spokane Public Radio.