Welcome to Chippendales

Loaded with first-rate performances and a killer soundtrack, Welcome to Chippendales is addictive, fun, and yet again proves that truth truly is stranger than fiction.

You have to keep watching simply to know where Banerjee ends up. Chippendales is a moreish junk-food binge and as enjoyable as it is at the time, it will leave you feeling a little bit grubby.

A multifaceted and highly entertaining look at the unlikely story of Chippendales’ founder — and the tragedy of his success.

There is more than meets the eye to the Chippendales. The same is true of the Hulu show.

Even if the titular club seems cartoonishly campy from the outside looking in, and one could easily forget that these are real people, Welcome to Chippendales helps to remind us that they're only human in the end.

“Welcome to Chippendales” features any number of imagined conversations and scenarios. But the major events depicted here really did transpire, which makes the ride all the more compelling and crazy. ... Nanjiani (“The Big Sick,” “Eternals”) plays against type and delivers the most complex and impressive performance of his career as Steve.

A large part of the series’ undeniable watchability comes from understanding how Chippendales came to be so powerful, despite being so close (and so often) to tearing itself apart. Even if some of the show’s bigger moments fall back on the unsurprising credo that corruption always wins (or, rather, that dignity always loses), there’s plenty to gawk at here.

Welcome to Chippendales doesn't reveal much those other projects haven't already covered, but it's buoyed by commanding performances from stars Kumail Nanjiani and Annaleigh Ashford.

On the continuum of scandal-based TV, Welcome to Chippendales is among the more effective offerings. It doesn't overplay its final stretch or try to be more penetrating than it's capable of. The show dresses its sorrowful core in spandex and bow ties, painting a portrait of prosperity undone by pride.

Welcome to Chippendales docudrama is great fun. Until it isn’t. Primarily a character study of the glittery male-stripper club’s uptight and insecure founder, Indian immigrant Steve Banerjee (Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjiani in a nuanced performance), the series foreshadows his tawdry fall from the start of his giddy rise. [5 - 18 Dec 2022, p.4]

Instead of fulfilling its potential for greatness, Chippendales settles for being merely good—and is sure to leave some viewers with the uncomfortable sense of having delighted in a dramatization of real people’s death and heartbreak. But its true-crime exploitation quotient doesn’t even approach that of Ryan Murphy’s recent smash Dahmer—Monster or the Renée-Zellweger-fat-suit burlesque of The Thing About Pam.

In a way, “Welcome to Chippendales” sacrifices a lot to show Steve slipping into tragedy. The business becomes the star around which everything here revolves, for better and worse. The show is a thorough overview, but whenever inspiration strikes, it’s usually only for the people on screen.