HOLLYWOOD — Hulu has unveiled the first three episodes of streaming series “Pam & Tommy,” a retelling of the saga of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s infamous sex tape and the origins of internet porn in the 1990s.
Reviewers have already been able to screen the episodes, which will premiere Feb. 2, with subsequent episodes dropping weekly.
The show highlights the role of adult industry characters in the distribution of what critics are calling “the OG sex tape,” after a disgruntled handyman allegedly stole it from the couple in 1995.
The sex-tape-snatching electrician is played by Seth Rogen, who also co-produced with longtime comedy partner Evan Goldberg. Nick Offerman plays an adult industry fixer who helps Rogen’s character commercialize the tape. The first few episodes were directed by Craig Gillespie, who directed the feature "I, Tonya."
Current adult performers who appear in the series include Aiden Ashley, who is reported to have shared a scene and dialogue with Rogen.
“Pam & Tommy” is based on a 2014 Rolling Stone magazine piece by Amanda Chicago Lewis.
“The Pam and Tommy sex tape is the most infamous stolen celebrity artifact on the planet,” Lewis wrote, “with a wink usually accompanying the word ‘stolen.’ It wasn’t the first time a video of a famous person fornicating appeared in the public realm, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But it was a porno that appealed to people who didn’t usually watch pornos, a voyeuristic dive into the guileless intimacy between two tabloid darlings: Anderson, perennial Playboy cover model and star of ‘Baywatch,’ and Lee, the hard-partying drummer from Mötley Crüe.”
What their sex tape taught, Lewis explained, “is that an unassuming individual could acquire a piece of content, offer it up to the internet and watch it ricochet around the planet. How, exactly, this footage traveled from a locked safe to screens and store shelves worldwide warns of everything that was coming in the next two decades, everything that would shift in technology and culture and celebrity.”
"Before Kim Kardashian, before TMZ, before RedTube, before the 'Fappening,' there was Pam and Tommy," Lewis wrote.
To watch “Pam & Tommy,” visit Hulu.com.