The Girlfriend Experience: Eminently Worth It

If it had to pick the best new 2016 television series on any medium - network TV, cable, or streaming - it would be The Girlfriend Experience on Starz.   And though it's hard to compare The Girlfriend Experience to the science fiction, crime, and historical drama I usually review here, it may well be the best series now on television, period.

What's it about?  Well, the girlfriend experience is offered by call girls who not only provide sex, but companionship, dinner, affection, conversation, attentive listening during the time that is purchased, for a thousand dollars or more an hour.   The purveyor of the experience thus needs to be not only beautiful, but intelligent and empathetic.

In order for a series like this to work, the lead actress has to not only be gorgeous, but convey that intelligence and sensitivity.  That would be Riley Keough, who gives a virtuoso performance as Christine Reade.   She's Elvis Presley's granddaughter, by the way.   I don't how she sounds on record, but she has more acting talent than everyone in her family combined - and I liked Elvis in Jailhouse Rock, and Priscilla was pretty good in Dallas, too.  But their granddaughter is something else again on screen.

The story's excellent, too.   Christine has a day job as a law student and legal intern - which is also why she needs to be so intelligent - and this puts The Girlfriend Experience on a continuum with Secret Diary of a Call Girl on Showtime (about a straight-up prostitute) and every lawyer show ever on television, including The Good Wife, and for that matter in a different way with Girls on HBO and The Devil Wears Prada in the movies, too.

But the subject of The Girlfriend Experience is something all its own, and the narrative does a good job of mining its possibilities and complications. Christine's clients range from obsequious to savvy, from brutal to sweet to even sometimes cool.   One of them realizes he can't afford to continue shelling out the big bucks for this and asks for a discount.   Another drops dead (off camera).   A third craves the jealousy part of any real relationship, and asks Christine to set that up.

The pacing in the 13-episode season, each 30 minutes, took a little getting used to, and wasn't helped by the fact that Cablevision didn't have all the episodes up on Starz On Demand as advertised - maybe I should pay for a more satisfying cable experience (wait, I thought I was already doing that) - but in the end and in retrospect I rather like the way the story is rolled out, especially the unconventional season finale.

There's astute use of media in the story, with smartphones and videos playing crucial roles, thus giving the media scholar a great excuse to watch this.

But you don't need an excuse.  The Girlfriend Experience is brilliant, provocative, appealing television, and a unique addition to the screen.

 

#SFWApro

Acoustic Space: A Short, Sage and Funny Movie

Just saw Acoustic Space, a short film by Anthony Marinelli currently on the film festival circuit, and based on the award-winning play by Marinelli of the same name.   That name is taken from Marshall McLuhan's phrase - "acoustic space" - which McLuhan created to describe the all-at-once immersion of the electronic environment.   In contrast to visual space, in which we tend to focus on a single direction or source of information, acoustic space gives us information from everywhere in the environment at once.  We can hear radio, for example, regardless of where our eyes may be focused - that's why listening to the radio works so well when we're driving a car.   McLuhan wrote this in the 1960s and 70s.   In my Digital McLuhan (1999) and New New Media (2009, 2012), I explored how what McLuhan wrote 40-50 years earlier was even more applicable to our current digital age, in which we're even more immersed in information than we were back then.

Acoustic Space the movie is both predicated on our digital immersion and a delightful and intelligent word-play on acoustic.  A couple about to have dinner in a restaurant are talking more to people on their phones than they are to each other.  We've seen scenarios like this before, but Marinelli  brings a special wit and pizzazz to the endeavor, with the couple almost seeming to be talking to one another when they're not, because the words they're saying on the phone have so much in common.

The man is an advertising exec and the woman is trying to give advice to her friend whose relationship is falling apart.   Acoustic Space thus resonates with the best of Mad Men and Girls.  The waiter - not at all a dumb waiter - also has some memorable lines.  If Woody Allen - who also had what to do with McLuhan in Annie Hall - and his irrepressible sketches of urban, high-tech frenetic life are to your liking, you're bound to enjoy Acoustic Space.   Indeed, I have no doubt that once it's released to the public, lots of people will be talking about it - in person and on phones in restaurants.

Cool Television Reviews by Other Writers

Following are some blogs with cool, savvy reviews - not written by me - of some excellent television shows -

• Candace Boyle: Game of Thrones
• Tom Brande: Community
• Annie Carter: Boardwalk Empire  
• Marisa Frydman: The Americans
• Danielle Kaslow: Girls
• Justin LaCoursiere: Parenthood
• Clara Villanueva: Downton Abbey
• Sean Alloca:  Shameless 
• Paul Lauricella: Battlestar Galactica 
• Catherine McNamara:  Breaking Bad 
• James Terry: Sons of Anarchy
• Nick Womack: Scandal  

Enjoy!