The world of “Angelyne” is hot pink. It’s a pink that can’t be described in terms of bubble gum or cotton candy because no one in the world would ever invent something pink enough to make this pink’s namesake. Except, maybe, Angelyne (here played by Emmy Rossum) herself. The enigmatic, endlessly watchable pop figure at the center of Peacock’s new series is the stuff of Los Angeles legend, as the show loves to remind us. Yet despite fixating unabashedly on the real-life Barbie for five full episodes, “Angelyne” remains as clever and winning as its subject. Maybe the color should be called “Angelyne pink.” She’d probably like that.
As both a real person and an object of adoration, Hollywood folk figure Angelyne evades easy explanation. In cultural memory, she appeared overnight, suddenly taking over billboards in 1984 with ads that seemed to celebrate her buxom figure but no real product. She gained a fervent fan base that was always on the lookout for her pink Corvette, and for a while, it seemed like the whole world had Angelyne fever. Then, in 2017, The Hollywood Reporter published a deep dive into Angelyne’s life that exposed the true identity of the mysterious one-named woman.
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The complexities of Gary Baum’s reporting and the renewed Angelyne love it inspired form the foundation of the new series by Nancy Oliver (“True Blood”), which starts out looking like a biography with documentary-like talking heads, but coalesces into something much more original. The show spends much of its run-time trying to pin the essence of Angelyne down, all while being clear about the fact that she doesn’t want to be fully understood. It’s an uneasy balance to strike, and its fawning exterior might be exhausting to some, but it also results in some of the year’s most creative, indelible television. Surreal, campy, energetic, and full of a the type of neon magic that can only be found in LA, “Angelyne” is a one-of-a-kind viewing experience.
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Rossum disappears into the role of Angelyne, vamping in form-fitting dresses and punctuating her breathy, Marilyn Monroe-like vocal patterns with little trilling squeals. Although she thrives on the hyper-feminine sexpot aesthetic that makes many underestimate her, it’s clear that everything about Angelyne is calculated. The show presents an impressively dynamic and psychologically rich portrait of the woman who inspired drag shows and murals and an army of loyal fans. Is she controlling and manipulative? Is she living in a fantasy world? Is she, somehow, doing important and singular work for the world? “Angelyne” graciously lets us believe in an “all of the above” answer.
“Angelyne” never stoops to call its central figure eccentric, instead, playing up the humor of her more inexplicable habits while maintaining a vein of sometimes baffled empathy for her throughout. Indeed, the show is supported by a cast of men–including her assistant and fan club president (Hamish Linklater), her billboard financier (Martin Freeman), and her would-be documentarian (Lukas Gage)–who all describe their often expensive yet true love for her with a sort of bemused confusion. The show is punctuated by weird details that make up her seemingly endless mythology, as when she collapses into a quiet, elegant heap upon becoming overwhelmed, or when she tries to talk journalists into buying paintings of her in exchange for an interview.
“My quest is to feel good all the time but it can be challenging in this reality,” Angelyne says at one point, just before her body starts drifting upwards into a space-like world made of marbled pink paint. “Angelyne” would be a perfectly fine show if it simply retold its strange central story in a faux-documentary form to the best of its abilities, but instead, it breaks its own format in an attempt to better understand the celebrity’s state of mind. In doing so, it becomes, suddenly, a totally great show. By the end of “Angelyne,” Corvettes float, hot pink moons hang in the night sky, and you can never quite tell if what you’re seeing is a scene directed by series filmmakers Lucy Tcherniak and Matt Spicer, or by some real or fictional version of Angelyne herself.
The forays “Angelyne” takes into the meta and the surreal are both delightful and surprisingly emotionally impactful. They’re also far better seen than read about here. Still, it’s worth noting that “Angelyne” breaks out of the traditional biopic mold in a huge way. The show could keep Angelyne at arm’s distance forever, a glittering, self-protective figure whose seemingly endless pep we may never understand. Instead, “Angelyne” breaks down her walls in a way that’s utterly cinematic, using the imagery of both ‘70s B-movie sci-fi and timeless, candy floss daydreams to let us see the world through Angelyne’s heart-shaped glasses.
To say that “Angelyne” is entirely adoring to its subject would be inaccurate. The show doesn’t dance around the less flattering parts of her story, and grapples frequently with the proto-Kardashian claim that she’s famous for doing next to nothing. Angelyne is often as annoying as she is charming, with Rossum striking an excellent balance between all her dissonant parts. But one of the show’s greatest strengths is that it doesn’t overstay its welcome: anytime we start to get sick of Angelyne’s obfuscations, the story throws in a detail or a flourish so captivating, so winning, so ridiculous that it’s impossible not to climb back on board.
In modern-day scenes, Rossum, Linklater, and others are captured in aging makeup. It’s a choice that could be distracting in a more self-serious project, but here, it works to capture the uncanniness and high camp of this “only in Hollywood” story. Just like the woman at its center, “Angelyne” seems to know more than we may feel inclined to give it credit for. The show has big things to say about womanhood and fame, but it couches them in this peculiar, hyperspecific, ever-engaging story. Like a hot pink laser beam shooting from the sky, both “Angelyne” and its subject are calculated for maximum, stylish impact. [A-]