Fosse/Verdon

Ultimately, I wished Fosse/Verdon was more focused, that it could bring all its fascinating parts into tighter alignment. But to those who appreciate the art of performance, the strongest piece of the series and the ingredient of entertainment about which it’s smartest, I say: Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!

The series is certainly competent, one collaboration that changed the face of American theater telling the story of another. But you’re looking for more of a Fosse shoulder roll, the extra tap in the time step, the unexpected contortion in the jazz number--the kinds of quirks that made Fosse and Verdon singular and unique. Their relationship was anything but by the book, and you wish this dramatization wasn’t afraid to go a little more off-script.

The eight-part series is simultaneously in thrall to Fosse as a legend of musical theater and critical about his excesses. It’s a tricky high-wire to walk, and Fosse/Verdon tries to manage it by positioning Verdon as Fosse’s counterforce, the backward-and-in-high-heels feminine yin to his fiery masculine yang. In reality, though, her character is less equal and more reactive.

Ignore its distractions and Fosse/Verdon is a savory, decadent treat, but ignoring Michelle Williams means depriving yourself of a show-stopping performance.

If you're familiar with Bob Fosse's choreography — obligatory "jazz hands!" jokes need not apply — and the who's who of '60s and '70s Broadway and can sing along to the entirety of Sweet Charity and Cabaret and Damn Yankees, there's a lot to enjoy here, starting with Rockwell and Williams. Beyond that, however, the early installments of Fosse/Verdon lean way too heavily on familiar genre tropes relating to self-destructive geniuses and the long-suffering women who love them. The love story of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon should open up as something bigger than just another well-cast prestige TV antihero saga. So far, it hasn't.

Rockwell and Williams are shoo-ins for Emmy nominations this summer, it’s true, but the material they’re given here never quite rises to meet their level.

The ambition of the piece rises to the level of those vaunted credits, if not necessarily their quality. In a chronologically scrambled tale of its titular subjects coming together, splitting apart, and forever driving one another to new creative highs, Fosse/Verdon mimics the former’s cinematic panache, while occasionally moving with the grace of the latter.

Williams never makes a wrong step, but, sadly, the same can’t be said for the writing and direction.

Fosse/Verdon is extremely watchable and totally fascinating. ... But it’s full of the shoddy and cruel compromises it purports to be about. It’s a show in which a grotesque man is made to seem less grotesque than he was, and a brilliant complicated woman seems less brilliant and complicated than she really was.

Fosse/Verdon, at least in the five episodes sent to critics, fizzles, weighed down by good intentions. It’s heavy, but mainly it’s heavy-handed.

For all its technical panache, puts stage center an overfamiliar biopic story of a brilliant, difficult artist.

Fosse/Verdon is a claustrophobic series as opposed to an epic one. What's mostly missing is the thrill of opening night, the chorus line, the music, the whole glorious space of the theater. That's what made these two such vital meta-humans in the first place. ... Disappointing.

As a reclamation project publicizing the influence of Verdon on well-loved pieces of theater and film, Fosse/Verdon is worthy. As television, it can’t find a rhythm that feels like its own.