The Deuce final season review – the porn epic everyone should be watching

David Simon’s seductive drama about the peep shows, pimps and porn stars of Times Square bows out in brilliant and bittersweet fashion. Tune in while you still can

Towards the end of the second season of The Deuce (Sky Atlantic), Candy, by this point a successful porn director circling the mainstream, said: “What we do is not going away. Not ever.” It was a moment of celebration and defiance, but it was a hollow statement, too, tainted by what we know had to come next. History had already informed viewers that time was running out. The world of 70s sleaze, porn, prostitution, crime and nightlife that The Deuce has sewn together with such skill had to give way to the 80s – and the opening episode of this final season marks the beginning of the end. Times Square is being gutted and transformed by the march of money, technology and disease.

We are at the tail end of 1984. Just as The Deuce showed the shift from peep shows to cinemas, now pornography is moving from cinemas into the home, and from the hands of experts into anyone who can get hold of a camera. Candy – one of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s best performances, in a career where that is truly an accolade – is still riding high on the success of Red Hot, if not the profits. She and her associate Harvey pay a visit to the Adult Consumer Electronic trade show, only to discover that Candy’s artfully constructed feminist erotica is no longer the draw it once was.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QEDcq2
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