American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story

Sprawling, long-winded telling of Hefner/Playboy's rise and fall is at its best in the earlier stages, functioning as a superficial but enjoyable overview of social/sexual mores circa 1950s and 60s America, with a nice balance of archival material and reenactments. Its clear iron-fist endorsement by its subject matter makes some of the later, and frankly duller, episodes more difficult to take, especially the romanticising of Hefner's vaguely predatory and smarmy ways. Worthwhile for the highs.

A narcissistic and uncomfortably romantisised account of a story that would have been more suited in a film form, rather than an overly-long TV series. The show had an unpleasant mixture of expository, interactive and performative documentary - the last being there only for the purpose of showing HD boobs (which is good in a way), the mediocre quality was ruined by the last episode which was laughably self-indulgent. Kudos to Mario Grigorov and the great intro song. And Polanski what the fuck??