I suspect that P-Valley (Starzplay) did not find an enormous audience in the UK for its first season, being tucked away on a subscription channel within a subscription service. But as it returns for a second run, this excellent, highly original drama about a strip club in America’s “dirty south” deserves a far bigger audience.
In the fictional town of Chucalissa, Mississippi – and if this series teaches us anything, it’s the best way of remembering how to spell Mississippi since Miss Honey’s class in Matilda – there is a club called The Pynk, run by boss/manager/mother hen Uncle Clifford (a wonderful, star-making turn from Nicco Annan). The first season racked up tales of murder, fake identities, abusive relationships and illicit queer affairs, to a soundtrack of largely female rappers. It dug its nails into power and politics, and refused to choose the easiest path to the finish line. Its dancers were not the cliched catty rivals, but fully fleshed-out Black women with believable, complicated lives both in and out of the club.
One notorious scene in its first episode saw top dancer Mercedes high up on a pole, swinging and twirling and dancing to the music. Suddenly the music and the crowd noise are cut completely, leaving only the sounds of exertion: the squeak of strong thighs climbing the pole, exhausted grunts and heavy breathing. It set out P-Valley’s stall early on. It doesn’t shy away from titillation – it’s about a strip club and its dancers, after all – but nor does it bother masking it with too much glitz and glamour. It puts on a show, and then it pulls back the curtain. It is a drama about a small town and its residents, and therefore it is a series about work. It shows the graft as well as the hustle.
Although it is partial to a touch of realism (crying babies are fed backstage, banknotes are taken home in carrier bags, there is a brief discussion about the merits of brass or cheaper chrome when it comes to building the poles), it is also fabulously heightened. The second season, which takes place five months after Hailey’s traumatic past finally arrived in Chucalissa, embraces its outsize personality. It makes the bold decision to not only reference the pandemic, but to place it at the heart of the story, making plain the economic impact that nightlife closures are having on the people reliant upon it. Uncle Clifford is resourceful, however, which leads to a jaw-dropping extended opening, in which a DIY pop-up version of The Pynk runs under the guise of a carwash called Pussyland. (The P in the Valley does not stand for Picturesque.) It is as brilliant a spectacle as you are likely to see on television, and it tops it all off with fireworks shooting out of Mercedes’ enormous high heels.
The spectacle is enough to recommend it, but P-Valley has much more depth. Behind the curtains – pink, shiny and shaped as the name would suggest – the local economy is in crisis. The dancers share their meagre and illicit “strip-thru” profits equally, but debate whether that is fair, given that Mercedes is the top draw. Hailey, formerly Autumn Night, is now The Pynk’s half-owner and business manager, competing with Uncle Clifford for supremacy as the club tentatively reopens. Uncle Clifford, meanwhile, is still hurt from the fallout of her relationship with the closeted rapper-on-the-up, Lil Murda, who is reliant on dancer Keyshawn joining him on tour in order to take his career to the next level.
There is a noir-ish feel to P-Valley’s more conspiratorial storylines. Hailey often takes a heavy drag on a cigarette, wearing her pristine white trouser suit, like a modern Barbara Stanwyck. The menace of the odious Derrick is only made worse by a lockdown that is keeping Keyshawn at home with him. It is tense and horrible. Andre is back in town and The Pynk, though saved, may not be as secure in its future as it thinks it is. I can’t wait to find out if it survives.
There is an easy confidence to P-Valley that makes it an utter pleasure to watch. Season two is funnier than the first, going further into its campiness, but it also feels as if it is now fully at ease with itself. There is a glut of prestige television, but this is a standout that is well worth tracking down.
P-Valley is on Starzplay in the UK, Starz in the US, and Stan in Australia now
