‘Paul T. Goldman’
We’re only 4 days into the new year but I am ready to declare Paul T. Goldman the BEST NEW SERIES OF 2023! (So far, at least.) This Peacock original series revolves around, you guessed it, Paul T. Goldman, a sixtysomething man who’s been trying to get his fascinating life story told for a decade and some change. On the surface, it’s got all of the ingredients of a great true crime story — Russian brides, porn stars, con artists, crime syndicates, the FBI — but what elevates this story is supremely inventive way that it’s told by director Jason Woliner (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm). He recognizes early on that Goldman is an unreliable narrator, which adds an interesting layer to Woliner’s highly meta approach to constructing this series. It recalls Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal in that viewers are never quite sure what is real and what is fake, or what is scripted and what is spontaneous. All that we know for sure is that it’s FASCINATING, which will keep us tuning into Peacock on Sundays for the duration of the run of this excellent series.