Comedy thriller Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed begins with a neat inversion of noir conventions. We meet divorced fact-checker Paula Saunders (Tatiana Maslany) smack in the middle of a contentious custody battle, cursed with an unfortunate tendency to make bad situations worse.The most unexpected detective on television today isn’t a hacker or a cop. It’s a fact-checker. Throughout her ordeal, Paula notices minute details that unravel a criminal conspiracy. In an era of AI-generated misinformation, it’s her scrupulous fact-checking that drives the investigation. Sherlockian flourishes simply won’t get it done. Paula is amusing herself with the services of sweet, affable ‘cam boy’ — a man who sells racy photos or videos of himself — Trevor (who has his own OnlyFans-like website in the show). When suddenly Trevor (Brandon Flynn) is assaulted and kidnapped on camera, Paula starts receiving extortion messages. This is a gender-flipped take on classic noir: a down-on-his-luck, middle-aged protagonist drawn into a seedy world of crime and violence through an alluring female stripper. The twist works beautifully, making Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, now airing on Apple TV+, a genuinely chimeric, genre-bending show. It is, at once, a thriller that’s way funnier than it needs to be and an out-and-out comedy that’s much more thrilling than you’d expect.Everybody needs therapy One of the big reasons why Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is so entertaining is quite simple, really — this show understands loneliness at a molecular level. It is a beautiful, funny-sad portrayal of the silos we have created for ourselves in the smartphone era. Almost every character on display is deeply, desperately lonely, even if they are constantly surrounded by people.