User Reviews

Eight episodes that caught my attention and my emotion. Each one delicately elaborated to express themes that until today are taboo and controversial. I am immensely happy that finally the LGBT community has the opportunity to give the world this good entertainment. Good stories, excellent actors, glitter and love. Thank you Pose, I'll see you next season.

Hello. White Heterosexual Englishman here with the "Hot Take" that you've been waiting for ! I really enjoyed this first season of "Pose" even though, frankly I was constantly baffled by the ranking and scoring system that determines the winner of the balls.

Ryan Murphy's latest show is about the 80's, largely black, New York, Gay and Trans' scene, which is beset by discrimination, within discrimination, within discrimination and with an awful spectre of AIDS looming over it. The shows primary focus is Blanca (MJ Rodriquez) who starts her own house to compete at the Balls, a fashion/style/dance hybrid-event.

Although I was joking with my "White Hetero" line earlier, it's fair to say that I do live a long way from the lifestyles shown in "Pose", it is, of course, not hard to connect with the characters though - as though the sources of and reasons for might be different, feelings of disconnection, betrayal, fear and the desire to be loved and to be seen for who you are, are universal. I'm still not sure I believe that Balls were a real thing though, or perhaps not to that scale. The budget for oversize trophies alone must have been more than the bar took.

I'm not sure that I buy the criticism I see on here that performances in the show were bad. A couple are certainly "mannered". Dominique Jackson certainly that as Elektra Abundance, initially Blanca's house mother, turned rival, but that performance, with her scything putdowns is fun to watch. Realistic, no... but fun. Unarguable though is that Billy Porter is excellent in this, given the most heavy lifting to do he carries it off magnificently. I'm really glad that his casting in Murphy's productions has elevated his TV career to a similar level to his as his theatrical one.

If I have any negative feelings about this first season of "Pose" it's that I watched it all with a sense of dread gnawing inside me, that at some point, one of these characters is going to meet a horrible fate, maybe that's what's coming in the second series. A touching and inspirational season, I hope in the UK we don't have to wait as long for the second as we have for the first.

Although English I was a teenager in the 1980s going into my early 20's. I loved the club scene even in the UK. There was Planet X where basically anything went. You could dress how you want, shag who you wanted, kill the ozone layer with your hairspray, boys and girls toilets no longer existed. There was gay night, straight night, Goth night. I loved the Gay nights because they were so glamorous. It may have only been Liverpool, but we had our fair share of celebrities. For example Holly Johnson from Frankie goes to Hollywood stripped off and swung from the rafters and was ejected from the club. (Well before camera phones!) Echo and the Bunnymen were about Teardrop explodes, China Crisis, my mate from Half Man Half Biscuit. I Loved it all and POSE brings back those feelings, of the new, the glamour, the bitchiness but also the love that was celebrated in the clubs. I think POSE Is amazingly brave and honest, it has the glamour but the heart ache of AIDS which unless you went through the 80's dreading the result if you got tested you cannot know how frightening that was. Nobody survived then. You had no chance because look at Liberace and Freddie Mercury absolutely minted and no cure. POSE reminds me of all that as well as being an outstanding series so for me it's pure heaven. If you miss this because of some uptight arses problem then remember this. You're missing TV heaven and they're the ones with the problem not you. MORE PLEASE MORE.........