Margo’s Got Money Troubles TV review: OnlyFans hook is just the tease, this great show is much more than that

It’s a great title for a TV show. Instantly relatable.

It also puts the audience strictly in Margo’s corner, because, girl, who doesn’t, you know?

The star-studded series from one of the kings of TV, David E. Kelley, has a catchy hook that could either be a drawcard or a turn-off, but don’t let the OnlyFans of it distract you, but that’s such a small part of the show.

It’s a much more substantive, character-driven family drama than its logline suggests, and elevated by fantastic performances from its lead cast of Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, who’s married to Kelley, and Nick Offerman. Plus, you get to see Nicole Kidman play a former wrestler, spandex costume and all.

Based on the book by Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is centred on Margo (Fanning), a student at a second-tier college with aspirations to become a writer.

Her literature professor, Mark (Michael Angarano), tells her she’s good enough to attend Harvard, and not to cast aspersions on Margo or her talent, but the age-old line works and she ends up having an affair with the married man.

Margo becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby over her mother Shyanne’s (Pfeiffer) objections. Shyanne was a single mum who raised Margo through hardship and she doesn’t want that for her kid.

Daddy-professor doesn’t want anything to do with Margo or the baby, so she’s left to deal with it mostly on her own, with some help from her friend and roommate Susie (Thaddea Graham), and Shyanne, who makes the baby, Bohdi, cry every time she picks him up.

Then Margo’s dad, a former wrestler named Jinx (Offerman), shows up on her doorstep, fresh out of rehab and keen to repair his relationship with his daughter and get to know his grandson.

Jinx is a gentle presence whose remorse and regret over his past estrangement is written all over his face. He not only cleans their bathroom with a toothbrush (actually such an inefficient method), he’s great with baby Bohdi.

Out of a cast of great talents, Offerman might be the MVP here. Jinx’s sad eyes, internal conflict, open vulnerability and yet optimism make him an incredibly magnetic character, and it’s Offerman’s compassionate performance that brings all that out.

His scenes with Pfeiffer are particularly good. Their characters have that barely repressed spark of ex-lovers but Shyanne and Jinx in very different places in their lives and want different things from each other, if anything at all.

Shyanne is about to marry a Christian preacher, Kenny (Greg Kinnear), whose conservatism makes him wary of a lot of modern realities.

Even though Margo has a support network, what she doesn’t have is money. Shyanne was a Hooters waitress and Jinx is unemployed, so there’s no handout from mum and dad to pay for frivolities like, oh, nappies and rent.

That’s when she turns to OnlyFans, posting photos with some nudity or being paid to describe solicited dick as Pokemon (hey, everyone is allowed a consensual kink).

The OnlyFans work is a necessity but the show never shames Margo for doing it, and actually sets up a couple of arguments in which objections are hashed out via other characters. Nor does the show glamorise it. It’s portrayed as kind of playful but ultimately, it’s something that helps Margo raise her kid.

Of course, it does have a flipside, and without spoiling it, let’s just say, it’s part of the narrative conflict in its latter episodes.

But given how much the marketing is around the OnlyFans hook, expectedly so, you might think that’s the whole show.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is at its best when it’s just these character moments, when it shows us the dynamics between Margo and her parents, Margo and her friends, and between all the other characters with each other.

There’s a lot of stigma that comes from being a young single mother, and people, even those who are supposed to be in corner will cast all kinds of judgment, perhaps without intention, but not always.

For that, the series does a great job in just kind of marinating in Margo’s world, taking the audience along with her every day – her joys and her challenges – as she makes her way through the world, her life forever changed, and trying to find a way to just survive but eventually thrive.

There’s been so many TV shows in recent years of the “(upper)-middle class white lady problems” sub-genre, and with variations, sometimes they’re not white and sometimes they’re just uber wealthy.

Those series often look the same, as if all these characters hired the same interior decorator for their opulent homes, decking it out with lush, soft textures, and it’s starting to create a bit of an empathy gap between those characters and the audience.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is avowedly different. Not poverty porn but also not boring and samey.

She and the show has spunk, and that’s exciting company to keep.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is streaming on Apple TV