Photograph: Erin Simkin/HuluPhotograph: Erin Simkin/Huluy Christmas and New Year were fine, thank you, and – ah, actually, I can’t tell you any more about that because a streaming platform has just bought the commercial rights to it. You’ll have to wait a year and a half for production to end to learn about my holidays.
What I suppose I am saying in a very roundabout way is: some stories simply do not need to be eight hours long. This has been proven very effectively by Welcome to Chippendales, the new show starring, which – and this is one of the kindest things I can say about it – is eight hours long.
The two easiest sells in Hollywood are “a man starts a business” and “it’s the 1980s”, and Welcome to Chippendales does both those things. The business? Male stripping revue Chippendales. The year? Whatever year Call Me by Blondie came out. The man? Somen “Steve” Banerjee, the Indian immigrant who briefly lived the American dream, looked down from a balcony upon his empire of male strippers, then let it all go to his head and ordered a murder.
This sounds salacious, doesn’t it? Quite gossipy, a bit sexy. Welcome to Chippendales does not seem to believe this. Nanjiani has not been given a lot of script to play with, but he isn’t doing much with what he has – Steve’s primary personality traits seem to be “he drinks Coca-Cola and never bends at the waist”.
What’s weird about this is that the source material should make for a fascinating story: the real-life Banerjee died in prison after getting a taste for arson and ordering a hit out on De Noia; Chippendales’ original promoter, Paul Snider, killed his estranged ex-wife, actor Dorothy Stratten, in a murder-suicide.