Watching the premiere of “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed,” Apple TV subscribers may get a distinct sense of déjà vu. Just last month, the streaming service premiered “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” a limited series about a single mother entering the world of virtual sex work via OnlyFans. The premiere of “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed,” which was created by David J. Rosen (“Sugar”) and directed by David Gordon Green (“The Righteous Gemstones”), divides this character in two: Paula (Tatiana Maslany) is a newly divorced mom who’s taken to patronizing a cam boy who goes by Trevor (Brandon Flynn), getting herself off while venting about her custody battle.
Two OnlyFans tales on television (three, if you count “Euphoria”!) in less than six weeks may seem like overkill, but once Paula witnesses Trevor being violently abducted in the middle of a session, “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” seems to lose interest in its own hook. Instead, the show follows Paula on her downward spiral, maintaining a relentless focus on a rapid succession of crises that’s effective in building momentum but loses any sense of what drew Paula to Trevor — whose services include Zoom dinner dates as well as cybersex — in the first place. Maslany does her best to make Paula a chaotic, charming, determined heroine; compared with playing a full set of clones on “Orphan Black” or acting through a layer of CGI in “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” getting the audience to root for Paula despite her disastrous decision-making is a relatively light lift. But her performance alone can’t fully obscure the gaps that peek through whenever “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” pauses its headlong sprint through the New York underworld long enough to catch its breath.
