Flesh and Bone

As a drama, Flesh and Bone is compelling and ripe for binge-watching.

As Flesh and Bone unfolds, though, the story gets darker and more warped, not just for self-destructive Claire but also for the rest of the troupe.... All [of] this is frequently hard to watch, but also impossibly addictive.

It’s intriguing for its setting and some of its stories--although the fine arts world in New York does call to mind the lighter “Mozart in the Jungle” on Amazon--and yet at the same time it’s often predictable in its premium cable-style plotting and pretentiousness, which is where the irritation comes in.... And yet, Flesh and Bone proved highly addictive, encouraging a binge of all its episodes in just a few days.

If German expressionism is your thing—and the sensation of emotional battering feels real here for the characters and viewers alike--the eight-episode series will be searingly satisfying. Everyone else, be warned and encouraged: This is a long walk on the dark side pierced by occasional moments of glittering, breath-stopping beauty.

Creator Moira Walley-Beckett’s eight-episode limited series about the depressing and excessively cruel world of professional ballet has moments that are sublime and engrossing but not always sustainable. Flesh and Bone can also be ham-handed in both narrative and dialogue.

The best parts of the eight-part limited series are when everyone's on their toes.... Too bad that whenever Flesh and Bone shifts focus from dance, it risks becoming flat-footed. [9-22 Nov 2015, p.12]

Flesh and Bone is so grim, so devoid of pleasure, so moldering that you're left to wonder why this significant collection of talent didn't actually have something fun or exciting to say about the New York ballet world.

Hay and the rest of the cast, which includes Raychel Diane Weiner and Karell Williams, are the main draw of Flesh And Bone, and if the show manages to ignite interest in the ballet, the world is a better place for it. But whenever it’s not focused on the dance, Bone manages the difficult feat of making ballet look inelegant.

For conveying such a rich sense of authenticity alone, for showing us the physical rigors facing those whose goal is to challenge gravity, Flesh and Bone deserves praise. The actors playing dancers are all professional dancers, too, so that the practice scenes are lovely and don’t require much dodgy camerawork. The storytelling, alas, leaves something to be desired.

The series’ dependency on melodrama is acceptable, but Walley-Beckett exaggerates too much when more substantive character development and evolution is needed.

Unfortunately the end result is a cast of supporting characters that fall flat without the proper development, and a lead that never quite opens up to the audience.

If the show had demonstrated more confidence in ballet’s ability to transfix audiences and ditched all the rib-sticking melodrama (at an extremely padded 60 minutes, every single episode drags), it could have been something really special.

The sheer number of underdeveloped or one-dimensional supporting characters after eight episodes is perhaps the biggest frustration of Flesh and Bone, because it leaves the show's whole world feeling underdeveloped and unrealized.

The writing from “Breaking Bad” veteran Moira Walley-Beckett makes the character so opaque that it’s difficult to be drawn into Claire’s story, especially in the early episodes, in which various story threads only occasionally cohere into a compelling whole.

Walley-Beckett could have easily told a much simpler tale with greater effect--it's not as if ballet drama is such a crowded field that a writer needs a new twist. Instead, she weighs down the real drama with clichés, lurid B plot and lots of absurd nudity.

What’s undeniable is that Flesh and Bone is impossible to take seriously, which might be the point, though it presents its steamy soap opera absurdities with an awfully straight face--there’s no indication that there’s a joke we’re supposed to be in on.

Flesh and Bone is to the art of the dance what the laughable Showgirls was to the Las Vegas flesh market. Except that the art of the dance in Flesh and Bone also includes stripping to help make ends meet. What emerges is a thorough mess on a grandiose scale.