TV Talk: ‘Pam & Tommy’ offers a wild, weird ride; ‘Ghosts’ renewed

There are some moments in Hulu’s “Pam & Tommy” that will make viewers take notice one way or another, but early episodes of this limited series are fairly hum-drum when they’re not way over-the-top. Then it improves, becoming more nuanced in later episodes.

Streaming Wednesday, “Pam & Tommy” is one of those projects that could have been a movie and definitely should have been fewer than eight episodes. Uniformly excellent performances by the lead trio and a fantastic soundtrack of ‘90s music help enormously, but there’s still just not enough story to justify the running time.

Construction worker Rand (Seth Rogen) gets tired of Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) constantly changing his mind on a bedroom remodel and stiffing Rand on the job. After Lee fires him, Rand, who has an interest in world religions, seeks karmic retribution. He wants just compensation, breaking into Lee’s mansion and stealing a safe. But it’s what that safe contains that turns all the characters’ worlds upside down: a Hi8 videotape of Lee and wife Pamela Anderson (Lily James) having sex.

Rand goes to a porn producer friend (Nick Offerman) who knows the tape is both a license to print money and toxic to porn distributors without a signed release from Lee and Anderson. So Rand goes the DIY route, making reproductions of the tape on his own and setting up a website to sell the tape from, a novelty in 1996.

Rand’s story is the heart of the series in early episodes and it’s initially more interesting than the story of Anderson and bullying narcissist Lee. Surely that’s why series writers/showrunners Robert Siegel and DV DeVincentis opted to include full-frontal nude shots of Lee in episode two.

Then in later episodes, “Pam & Tommy’s” sympathies shift to Anderson, particularly after she appears on “The Tonight Show” and Jay Leno, yukking it up, asks her what it’s like to have her private moments seen far and wide.

“It’s horrible,” says Andreson, who the series then presents as the victim of a crime. “This is devastating to us.”

That turn may seem jarring. After all, the promise of “Pam & Tommy” is to gleefully re-tell a salacious tabloid story and then it goes and offers a critique of reactions to the story that extends to this show’s viewers and their motivation for tuning in. But it’s a turn that works because it’s authentic to how an initial response to current pop culture events can change when viewed through the lens of history.

‘The Woman in the House…’

Netflix describes this eight-episode half-hour series as “darkly comedic,” but aside from some ridiculously voluminous pours of wine, there’s little that’s funny about “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window.”

While the title suggests a Mel Brooks-style parody of “The Girl on the Train” and its ilk, the tone of “The Woman in the House…” is not satirical.

Streaming Friday, Kristen Bell (“Veronica Mars”) stars as Anna, an alcoholic, heartbroken woman who thinks she spies a murder through her front window. But did she?

If there’s a reason to watch – and judging by the first three episodes, I’m not convinced there is – it’s for the mystery. But even that seems like it might be predictable: The presence of Cameron Britton (filmed-in-Pittsburgh “Mindhunter” and “Manhunt: Deadly Games”) as a barely-glimpsed handyman taking forever to repair a mailbox in early episodes suggests he’ll play a more significant role later in the series. Maybe as the big bad? Or an undercover cop who swoops in to save the day? Even with episodes running an economical half-hour, it didn’t seem worth the effort to stick around to find out.

Kept/canceled/revived

CBS renewed “Ghosts” for a second season and will also bring back “The Neighborhood” and “Bob (Hearts) Abishola,” starring Pittsburgh native Billy Gardell, for the 2022-23 TV season.

HBO renewed “Righteous Gemstones” for a third season.

Peacock canceled “Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol” after a single season.

After some disappointing movies, Disney+ ordered a “Percy Jackson and the Olympian” series with “Percy Jackon” author Rick Riordan writing the first episode with Jon Steinberg (“Black Sails”).

Apple TV+ lands ‘Cha Cha’

The filmed-in-Pittsburgh, Dakota Johnson-starring movie “Cha Cha Real Smooth” not only came away from the virtual Sundance Film Festival with positive reviews (85% fresh on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes), the film also landed a distributor.

According to Variety, Apple TV+ paid around $15 million for the movie. No word yet on when “Cha Cha” will dance its way onto the streaming service.

Filmed in Pittsburgh last summer, largely at Pittsburgh Mills, the movie stars Johnson as a young mother who hires a recent college grad (the film’s director Cooper Raiff) to work the event.

Channel surfing

Actor Julian McMahon, who stars as Jess LaCroix on CBS’s “FBI: Most Wanted,” will exit the CBS procedural in the March 8 episode, per Deadline.com. Actor Dylan McDermott will join the series as a new character in April. … Josh Duhamel joins Disney+’s “The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers.” … Jorja Fox joins William Petersen in not returning for season two of CBS’s “CSI: Vegas.” … Sequel movie “Downton Abbey: A New Era” shifts again from a March release to May 20 in the U.S. … The eight-episode third season, “My Brilliant Friend: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay,” debuts at 10 p.m. Feb. 28 on HBO and on HBO Max.