Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed: Tatiana Maslany shines in freefall (review)

This labyrinthine new thriller from Apple TV sends a recently divorced mother into a spiral of lies, blackmail and improbable murder. A captivating offbeat series where chaos is everywhere.

Poor Paula…

“If half of what happened to him happened to me, I think I would curl up in a corner…” Tatiana Maslany admits to us during a long interview.

And it’s true that the newly divorced mother at the center of Maximum Guaranteed Pleasure is not going to have only good times… The amusing title of the new Apple TV series – which begins today – also sounds like an ironic snub to the countless troubles that await Paula, while she tries to pick up the pieces of her life, after her husband left her for a younger colleague. The problem is that Paula is the type to turn every problem into a disaster. She makes a series of bad choices, like when she thinks she can confide in a cam boy, a young and handsome sex worker on the Internet, who gets naked for a few dollars. Paula pays believing she sees him as a virtual confidant. No luck: here she is caught in the uncontrollable spiral of a gigantic scheme.

Blackmail, murder, unspeakable secrets… The soccer mom will drown a little more every time she tries to get her head above water during a particularly captivating labyrinthine thriller. Over ten half-hour episodes, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed spares no effort to surprise us. Sometimes the series does a little too much. But she never falls into nonsense. And always, refuses trajectories that are too obvious, preferring unpredictable detours and sudden turns. We’re never really comfortable, and that’s precisely what works here: following Paula means accepting to lose control with her.

At the center of this perfectly orchestrated chaos, Tatiana Maslany makes an impressive comeback after the bad buzz of She-Hulk. The star revealed by Orphan Black finds here a role commensurate with his intensity: luminous, fragile, funny, sometimes unbearable, but always magnetic. She carries the entire series on her shoulders, turning Paula’s every misstep into a delicious mess. Opposite her, Jake Johnson (who plays the ex-husband) does not exist. The former New Girl troublemaker appears sadly under-exploited. Conversely, Murray Bartlett, brilliant in The Last of Us and The White Lotus, imposes a disturbing and icy presence as an unscrupulous assassin, Paula’s ideal dark counterweight.

In its mixture of tension, black humor and psychological wreckage, Maximum Guaranteed Pleasure finds a singular identity. An unpredictable, and strangely addictive, downward spiral.

Maximum Guaranteed Pleasure, in 10 episodes, to watch on Apple TV (and also via MyCanal in France) from May 20 until July 15, 2026.