Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Flack’ On Pop, Where Anna Paquin Plays A Publicist Who Bails Celebrity Clients Out Of Trouble

Recent news has shown us that yet again celebrities sometimes can’t get out of their own way, acting against the best interests of their career and brand. That’s when a good publicist, especially one that’s good at putting out fires, becomes invaluable. Flack is a series about someone who is thriving in her career as a crisis PR rep, but whose personal life could use someone like her cleaning things up. Read on for more…

FLACK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear a woman breathing heavy as if she’s having sex, then we see this woman giving CPR to a naked, unconscious young man.

The Gist: Robyn (Anna Paquin), is an American working in London for a multinational PR firm. She’s one of the firm’s best “crisis” PR reps, someone who swoops in and bails her celebrity clients out of trouble. The person she was resuscitating, for instance, was a 15-year-old, coke-snorting, male lover of a soccer star who hasn’t publicly come out and wants to keep it that way. Not only does Robyn threaten the underage lothario after he says he’ll go to the tabloids with his story, she also concocts a fake marriage for the soccer star that allows both spouses to conduct their secret lives out of the spotlight.

The main case in the first episode, Robyn enlists her brand new intern Melody (Rebecca Benson) to help her cover up an affair that a well-known, Gordon Ramsay-esque chef engaged in, to keep sales of his book going. An excuse about his wife’s health is cooked up, but Melody makes the rookie mistake of actually calling the wife to ask about a doctor’s appointment. Things are about to fall apart when Robyn comes up with an idea to keep everyone satisfied and the chef’s sex addiction out of the rags. Then she has sex with him, telling him she “felt nothing.”

Robyn likely feels nothing because she and her sister Ruth (Genevieve Angelson) are still mourning their mother, who threw herself off the Brooklyn Bridge a year earlier. They moved to London to get away from the pain of her suicide, but they also have to deal with growing up in an unstable, emotionally abusive environment. Robyn unloads her info on a young mother she sees in the park, saying that she’s scared that she’ll end up the same way. It’s too the point where she still takes birth control, despite trying to conceive with her boyfriend Sam (Arinzé Kene).

Our Take: Created by actor/writer Oliver Lansley, Flack is notable because of its largely-female cast, which includes Sophie Okonedo as Robyn’s demanding boss Caroline, and Lydia Wilson as Robyn’s party-happy officemate Eve. It’s also notable because it gleefully examines how celebrities lean on publicists to smooth out their worst instincts and acts and shape their public face. The chef, for instance, is “every housewife’s favorite,” so the idea that he’s a sex addict doesn’t mesh with his brand. It’s fun seeing Robyn so bloodlessly figure out how to keep that brand intact, even when her client is acting against his career interests.

Not really in love with the trope of “She has it all together at work, but can’t get it together in her personal life” that we see with Robyn. Yes, the contrast is there to show that Robyn’s not a machine, but it feels like at times she’s playing a only slightly more serious version of Aya Cash’s You’re The Worst character Gretchen, who is a complete and total mess in her personal life despite being good at her job.

We’re not sure if it was when she borrowed her sister’s panties, then lost them when she had sex with the chef. Or when her young niece says she “smells funny”, which might be a combo of booze, smoke and blow. But it just feels like showing a woman whose personal life is out of control, even in her 30s, feels like a bit too easy of a crutch to lean on.

The format of the show, though, should salvage this; every week, Robyn will have to deal with a new client who needs to have something dire smoothed over, with the arc of her personal life going on in the background. That will likely help keep the stuff about her chaotic life to a minimum.

Sex and Skin: The naked soccer star and lover are right in the first scene. We also see Robyn getting banged by the chef on the bathroom sink of his hotel room.

Parting Shot: Robyn is so frustrated with herself, she smashes her toothbrush against her bathroom sink.

Sleeper Star: We’ll go with Okonedo as Caroline, who is such a ruthless boss that she brings a straight accounting underling as her lesbian date to an LGBTQ fundraiser and thinks she can get away with it.

Most Pilot-y Line: The scene where Robyn reveals all to that random overwhelmed young mother in the park feels a little too convenient a way to provide exposition for her character, instead of showing more of what’s eating at her as the episode goes along.

Our Call: STREAM IT for the celebrity shenanigans, but it might be hard to watch those if Flack leans too heavily on Robyn’s mess of a life.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Flack on PopTV