For Kim Kardashian, bad publicity is the best publicity. The more degrading, scathing and humiliating, the better it is for her career.
This is the woman, after all, who was selling her friends’ old clothes on eBay for commission until she achieved a blast of notoriety in 2007 for her sex tape… allegedly peddled by her own mother (who eventually denied the claim).
Kim became the most talked-about celebrity in the world, though why, no one can say. What we do know for sure, in the wake of her new Disney+ drama All’s Fair about mega-rich divorce lawyers, is that she isn’t famous for her talent as an actress.
All’s Fair has attracted the most toxic reviews ever aimed at a TV series, from both critics and viewers. The Atlantic magazine calls it ‘an atrocity’, a word usually reserved for war crimes and terrorist attacks. The online US news outlet The Wrap labelled it ‘the most transparently terrible show’.
The Los Angeles Times said: ‘All’s Fair makes the dismal final season of And Just Like That [the Sex And The City spin-off] look like Chekhov.’
Here, The Times dubbed it ‘maybe the worst drama ever’. ‘Fascinatingly, incomprehensibly, existentially terrible,’ said the Guardian.
Rotten Tomatoes, the web’s round-up of reviews, gave it a zero per cent initial rating, though that has now climbed to a grudging 6 per cent.
Kim Kardashian plays Allura Grant, a sassy young lawyer who teams up with friends Liberty Ronson (Naomi Watts) and Emerald Greene (Niecy Nash) to pioneer a feminist law firm
And the result? Phenomenal ratings, as everyone watches to see if it can really be as bad as promised.
Kim gleefully asked her 354 million Instagram followers, ‘Have you tuned in to the most critically acclaimed show of the year!?!?!?’ – before adding data that shows All’s Fair is the most watched title on Disney+ in the US and 27 other countries worldwide.
With viewing figures like that, it can’t really be so bad… can it?
Oh yes. However much awfulness you’re expecting, the first three episodes currently available for streaming are far, far worse than that.
Kim plays Allura Grant, a sassy young lawyer who teams up with friends Liberty Ronson (Naomi Watts) and Emerald Greene (Niecy Nash) to pioneer a feminist law firm specialising in a lucrative area stupid old male lawyers have never bothered to exploit – helping unhappy wives achieve divorce settlements that bleed their billionaire husbands dry.
Typical case history: a pretty waitress with dreams of stardom but low self-esteem settles for marriage to some sleazy tech firm boss. Too late, she realises she’s a lesbian – but she’s locked into a cruel prenuptial agreement.
If she walks out, she leaves with nothing. But she can’t bear to stay: ‘Lionel has proclivities… sexual fantasies.’
Allura knows just how to win this one. She sends Emerald and her zoom-lens camera to follow the pervy weirdo to his favourite sex dungeon. The three lawyers march into this dominatrix den and confront the madam, who is wearing red gloves and sitting on a leather throne.
Allura offers her $10million for incriminating photos of Lechy Lionel. Cut to a showdown with his legal team. When shown a picture of a sex toy the size of a traffic cone, they crumple and, 30 seconds later, Allura and the girls are cracking open a bottle of champagne, which they refer to as ‘Victory Fizz’.
This storyline would have to be the most skin-crawling, toe-twisting, teeth-grinding, gut-squelching shovelful of TV ordure I’ve ever had dumped on my desk – except that it isn’t even the worst part of the pilot episode.
More revolting still is a scene where a rival lawyer and former colleague – Carrington Lane, played by Sarah Paulson – sends Allura a bouquet of lollipops, ‘lightly brushed with salmonella and fecal matter’.
Carrington is upset because she wasn’t invited to join the other girls at their hubby-bashing law firm. But how could they trust her? She used to steal Allura’s lunch from the fridge at work, and any solicitor who would do a thing like that deserves to be struck off.
Allura can afford to laugh off the business with the stinky lollipops. She certainly doesn’t think of suing Carrington for ‘exposure to hazardous substances’ or suchlike, because it’s well-known that American lawyers almost never sue for any reason.
Instead, she drives her open-top Bentley to her home in the Hollywood Hills, where a butler opens the door, and another takes her coat. After making sure that her team of chefs is preparing dinner, she sashays upstairs to change, selecting an outfit from her walk-in wardrobe – and look, she has a walk-in jewellery store as well.
Her husband Chase (Matthew Noszka) saunters in, pretending to have forgotten it’s their fifth wedding anniversary – but he’s just kidding. He’s got her a ring, with a diamond as big as a lollipop. ‘Didn’t this belong to Elizabeth Taylor?’ she intones. ‘I have no idea who she is,’ he replies. Of course he doesn’t – Chase is a man. But he has bought her jewellery and that should always be rewarded in the most feminist way, so Allura straddles him at the dining table.
It won’t last, though. She’s just too darn successful for any man to bear. ‘Next to you, I feel hopelessly, ridiculously small,’ he bleats.
It beggars belief that talented performers like Watts and Nash can be involved in this. So is Oscar nominee Glenn Close, as Allura’s mentor, and other respectable names such as Pirates Of The Caribbean star Jack Davenport and The Handmaid’s Tale actor O-T Fagbenle, all directed by six-time Emmy winner Ryan Murphy.
Watts in particular will never live down a scene in which she lands a $40million settlement for an unfaithful wife in New York, by jumping on the firm’s private jet and flying across America to inspect and value the woman’s jewellery collection.
With dazzling legal acumen, Liberty announces that all these rocks belong to the wife, not the husband – so they pack them into a clutch of crocodile-skin cases and waltz out of the house, while the abandoned husband sobs impotently.
And if you’re worried that two middle-aged women loaded with sparklers worth tens of millions might be a teensy bit vulnerable on the streets of NYC, be assured that Liberty is armed with acid-tongued quips and she isn’t afraid to use them. No mugger would dare risk provoking her caustic wit.
Watts, the star of Mulholland Drive and 21 Grams, is an acclaimed actress. So is Glenn Close, of course: the Fatal Attraction star was so wounded by the mauling of All’s Fair that she posted a cartoon online, showing the show’s stars boiling a floppy-eared critic for bunny stew.
But all their star-power cannot begin to rescue this show, nor make Kim Kardashian look like she can read aloud, let alone act.
Alan Carr once said her backside ‘feels like an Edam cheese’. Her face is equally rubbery and expressionless, and her voice is droningly robotic. It’s not only that she cannot convey emotion – I find it impossible to believe she knows what an emotion is.
When her husband leaves her, Allura imagines donning acres of canary yellow tulle and smashing up her rival’s Mercedes with a matching yellow baseball bat. She does it with the faintest of smiles, wearing the face of a woman who died in her sleep after an overdose of pills. Her friends reassure her that the break-up isn’t her fault. ‘Weak men just can’t handle strong women,’ they chorus.
That must be why All’s Fair has such execrable reviews. Kim Kardashian is just too strong. We can’t handle it.
