Margo’s Got Money Troubles Review – Michelle Pfeiffer’s Career Renaissance Starts Here | TV and radio

MArgo’s Got Money Troubles first gives us why. Margo has financial problems because Margo got pregnant. Margot got pregnant because she was very young, and she thought it was a good thing for her English professor to write a poem for her (poems written by English professors are never a good thing). She started having sex with her English professor and their shared brain power clearly didn’t extend to using contraception. Margot remained pregnant because there is no story in “A young woman who has a miscarriage, and goes through the rest of her life without any trauma, in fact.” Margo gave birth to the baby. This is where the money problems begin.

David E Kelley’s new series is an eight-part comedy-drama, adapted from the feisty 2024 best-selling novel by Rovi Thorpe, and directed by Dearbella Walsh. It stars Elle Fanning (as wonderful as she was in The Great) as the eponymous heroine, and Michelle Pfeiffer as her mother Cheyenne (which, along with her role in The Madison, might signal a proper career renaissance for the actor – à la Kidman, but less boring).

Shyanne got herself pregnant as a young girl through a one-night stand with a customer at the Hooters restaurant where she worked — a professional wrestler named Jinx (Nick Offerman) who turned out to be married. He’s drifted in and out of their lives ever since, but Cheyenne carries a torch for him that refuses to be extinguished by his absence or the fact that she’s now involved with an Episcopal priest (Greg Kinnear), who has promised her a safe life at last.

Pfeiffer gives us Cheyanne’s sadness, disappointment, frustration, and resignation at the news of Margot’s pregnancy and her decision to keep the baby. “Will I love him? Of course. Just as I loved you from the moment you were born… But this life as you know it – this life you never knew – is over. I can’t be happy about it.” It’s a powerful scene and gives Pfeiffer something worthy of her talents. But the fact that it represents the series’ most extreme and complex moment underscores the show’s major flaw: despite the introduction of sex work (as Margo discovers a niche market for sci-fi OnlyFans accounts), the return of Jinx after a stint in rehab and the vengeful mother of Marcia Gay Harden, it remains a David E. Kelley production.

Which means that the drama remains light, bright and constant alongside the angels. Nothing in Kelland is allowed to become too serious, or to be questioned too thoroughly. Perhaps the closest he ever came was Big Little Lies and its dark themes of domestic violence and women’s despair – but even then, the guardrails were still firmly in place. There was no doubt that true justice would be done, and the sheen of it all separated us from the feeling of genuine terror that would have accompanied a more realistic scene.

Here, every punch is carefully pulled. When Jenks learned how his daughter made money, he was only briefly shocked, only briefly judgmental — and shortly thereafter, he expressed remorse and support. His and Sheyan’s path are never in doubt, and the priest is set up from the beginning as nothing more than a vehicle to demonstrate the hypocrisy of religion (he’s not as good a guy as a recovering drug addict!). She’s a former wrestler turned lawyer (played by Nicole Kidman, cracking a smile that’s been stored since at least Big Little Lies debuted in 2017) who represents Margot against maternal spite because you should never underestimate people. Because we all contain multitudes and – uh – sex workers and wrestlers are human beings too. Then there is something about the images and stories that both functions require their practitioners to construct.

So, it’s a comedy-drama heavier on the former than the latter, best enjoyed as a comforting commentary on the importance of family and the irrelevance of how you build it or the mistakes you make when you try along the way. It has charm, and it’s endearing if you’re not allergic to schmaltz that’s just begging to break through the surface. But, with the three main talents involved, it could have been much more than that.