P-Valley

Ultimately, the series knows exactly what it wants to be: a sexy, fast-paced drama that sets out to de-stigmatize the world of stripping and shatter misconceptions. It succeeds. “P-Valley” is an engrossing ride into the Mississippi swamp, and like nothing audiences have ever seen on television. Welcome to the Dirty South.

P-Valley blends the profane, the sacred, and the politics of the almighty dollar to tell sharp, wildly engrossing stories about Black women on the margins who use their bodies to keep families and whole communities afloat. It's also one of the year's best new shows.

P-Valley is the kind of series so variously accomplished you don't know what to praise first. ... The cast is uniformly excellent but the central trio of Evans, Annan and Johnson especially so, making the most of often luscious dialogue that veers between playfully obscene and heartbreakingly forlorn.

Helmed by an all-female directing lineup, P-Valley is a compelling character-driven story that shines a spotlight on the beauty and scars of women, Black women, in particular. It is an unapologetically Southern and Black story that puts women who are often shamed and pushed toward society’s edges right back where they belong—center stage.

In all respects, "P-Valley" sides with these women and those who support them while previewing threats on the horizon. Their view informs the focus in the writing, the directing and the performances, turning every stereotype about these places and these women on its head and presenting them from a view that serves their perspective, for once. And when the story inevitably succumbs to some of its more melodramatic inclinations, no part of its potency declines in the bargain.

Hall is still doing something extraordinary here. Better yet, something original.

P-Valley may or may not be the next Power, but it deserves to be—what it adds to the TV landscape is fresh, raw, and provocative in all of the right ways.

P-Valley is a series that has a lot to say from a perspective that hasn’t gotten much of a voice on prestige TV to this point. As the ensemble meshes, it’ll be interesting to see how this alternative family operates.

“P-Valley” achieves that rarest of balancing acts: It is a thoughtful immersion into an overlooked culture and community — in this case, the economically strapped, predominantly black “Dirty South” of broken dreams, gospel truths and palpable prejudices. The show excels at both tawdry entertainment and meaningful moments of character study.

It’s a vibe show more than a story show — the plot is a familiar stew made up of shady land deals, stolen identities, and extramarital affairs — but that vibe borders on hypnotic. The Pynk and the people who work there feel real, and desperate, and all kinds of complicated.

The troubles in P-Valley feel both substantial, genuinely life-altering, and the germane hurdles imposed by a country designed to wring profit out of segregation and economic segmentation. But for all the rot coursing through, P-Valley is blisteringly entertaining, its dance sequences regularly outdoing J Lo’s star-cementing turn in Hustlers.

“P-Valley” is a lot of show, a noir melodrama about struggle and secrets, family strife and business machinations. But above all, it’s a confident and lyrical story with an intimate understanding of the sort of characters who are too often used as decoration in the Bada Bings of antihero drama.

It is filled with powerfully good material, from the intensely lived-in performances to the internecine clashes that sometimes erupt into violence. Going in, though, you need to be prepared for a heightened, densely dramatic kind of atmosphere.

The plotting is convoluted at times, and the ongoing hints about Autumn’s traumatic past feel unnecessarily vague. But Hall’s characters and the cast — especially Evans and Annan — are vibrant and compelling.