“GLOW” makes a case for the fun of the grotesque, but the show itself is subtle. Illustration by Olimpia Zagnoli

Netflix’s “GLOW,” created by Carly Mensch and Liz Flahive, and executive-produced by Jenji Kohan, of “Orange Is the New Black,” is a carbonated blast, ten episodes of pure Silly String joy. It’s smartly plotted, with characters that deepen in the course of the show. But, refreshingly, in our era of homework TV, it’s also a joyride, all roller skates and mousse-claw bangs, synthesizer jams and leopard-print leotards, home pregnancy tests and cocaine-serving robots. By the final episodes, I was whooping at my computer screen, fists in the air, like a superfan.

As those old-school accessories suggest, the series is set in the mid-eighties, in the San Fernando Valley—a dingy landscape of fast food and wishful thinking, on the fringes of Hollywood. We meet Ruth (Alison Brie) when she’s at an audition for a network drama, doing her best imitation of a steely corporate raider. Ruth’s actually reading the man’s part, in a Hail Mary pass to get noticed—only crappy roles are available for women, and she’s not even getting those. In the ladies’ room, a casting agent gives her the bad news. When directors ask for somebody they haven’t seen, “who’s real,” she tells Ruth, as she fixes her hair, “I bring you in, so they can see that they don’t actually want the thing they think they want.”

Luckily, she also gives Ruth a hot tip: an audition, in the Valley, for the pilot of a show called “GLOW”—Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Though it’s an offshoot of the popular W.W.F., no one making it seems to know what it is. There’s no script, no characters. The director is a grindhouse auteur, who sniffs at having to do a “dumb wrestling show.” The women auditioning are, like Ruth, Hollywood uncastables, racially and visually diverse. Soon, Ruth hits another low: her best friend, Debbie, a soap-opera actress turned stay-at-home mom, finds out that Ruth has screwed her husband. She’s furious enough to come to the set and tackle Ruth right there in the ring.

It’s an absurd, over-the-top catfight, but it lights a spark. The director, Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron), glimpses something marketable in it—it’s an archetypal showdown, an all-American mom versus a homewrecker. Still, it takes a few episodes for the team to crack the “GLOW” formula, and, when it does, the series lifts off. The producer who solves the problem would be the villain in any other eighties show: Bash, a blow-dried trust funder. At a wild party he throws for the cast at his house—there’s a Roy Lichtenstein on the wall and a multitiered sofa—he encourages the ladies to put on costumes and embrace their own stereotypes. “It’s not a judgment,” he insists. “It’s just what I and the entire world sees with our eyes.” The results are hilariously offensive: a Cambodian actress rebrands herself as Fortune Cookie; a young Indian woman becomes a ululating terrorist named Beirut; and a “big black girl,” whose son is at Stanford, struts around in a fur coat as Welfare Queen. A dim British model becomes Britannica, the Smartest Woman in the World. Debbie, naturally, is designated the star, a red-white-and-blue blond bombshell named Liberty Belle.

Arguments break out immediately, and they continue to roll through the show, even as we get the requisite training montages and behind-the-scenes drama: Is it O.K. to act out a crass stereotype if it makes you a star? How about if you get paid a ton? What if your performance is genuinely funny? Is it subversive—or cathartic, or even therapeutic—to expose the ugliest ways people see you? Or is that just an excuse you make because it’s better than being ignored? “It’s sort of a ‘fuck you’ to the Republican Party,” Sam suggests, to the skeptical Welfare Queen. The show keeps inserting new perspectives, drawing fascinating parallels to all the sub-rosa genres that critics condescend to: soaps, tabloids, punk, horror. As with reality TV, decades later, these schlock industries at least let working-class faces, fat bodies, older women, and ethnic outsiders be seen. If these productions are crude, it’s a badge of pride.

But, even as “GLOW” makes a compelling case for the power and the fun of the grotesque, the show itself is subtle. One of its most effective elements is the contrast it creates between the glam cartoons in the ring and the women behind them, who hang around the pool at a rinky-dink motel, trade “cooter plugs,” and flirt with the pizza guy. It’s impossible to select just one standout performance—there are more than a dozen characters, all great—but among my favorites are Sydelle Noel, as a disaffected African-American stuntwoman; Britney Young, as the shy daughter of pro wrestlers; and Jackie Tohn, who has comic verve out the wazoo, as a spoiled Madonna wannabe who calls herself “the Cézanne of bullshit artists.”

Truth is, “GLOW” would probably be delightful even if it simply stuck to formula: it’s a classic “Bad News Bears” story, complete with the Walter Matthau-ish coach, scored to Scandal and Journey songs. But unlike other eighties-pastiche series, such as “Red Oaks” and even the terrific “Stranger Things,” “GLOW” feels like it’s set in the actual eighties, not a dream board of eighties movies. The characters ring true, too. Marc Maron is ideally cast as the divorced, coke-snorting, self-destructively angry but also insightful and creative impresario—a crank who is not wrong. “You’re like Grace Kelly on steroids!” he says, wheedling the reluctant Debbie back into the ring. “Fuck salads. Fuck tiny moments in closeup. Fuck polite and comatose.” Maron, who hosts the terrific podcast “WTF” and had a not-great series on IFC, is a strong flavor, the kind that might ruin a recipe if wrongly applied. But here, playing the director of classics like “Blood Disco”—he’s basically Russ Meyer with a heavier mustache—he excavates fresh levels of aggressive charisma, wit, and vulnerability. He’s sexy, too.

His slow-building dynamic with Ruth, which moves from contempt to a collegial chemistry, is one of “GLOW” ’s sharpest arcs. “Debbie’s the hero and you’re the villain!” he tells her, with sadistic delight, early in their relationship. “Everybody’s gonna hate you.” When Ruth’s face crumples, he won’t have it. “Oh, Christ. Crying, caring, the desperation. That’s what makes you unbearable. Look—I don’t like you, Strindberg. Take that in, hold on to it. Try not giving a fuck. There’s a lot of power in that.” Then he adds the kicker that she needs: “And relax. The devil gets all the best lines.”

“Claws,” on TNT, is working with some of the same tropes as “GLOW.” It’s a funky female-ensemble action-comedy, set in a Florida nail salon. But “Claws” isn’t a self-reflexive show about trashy entertainment, as “GLOW” is—it’s the thing itself, a neon-pink crime comedy, streaked with ultraviolence and dirty banter. The pitch is basically Elmore Leonard plus “Steel Magnolias” and “Weeds,” with a touch of “Spring Breakers.” Or, as Sam Sylvia might put it, it’s got blood and tits and storytelling.

The fab Niecy Nash—who underplayed so effectively on “Getting On”—is Desna, the busty, brassy owner of the salon, a bejewelled money launderer who is being exploited and underpaid by a bisexual mobster called Uncle Daddy (Dean Norris). Her colleagues include Carrie Preston, the batshit red-headed lawyer from “The Good Wife,” as a recovering grifter in an ankle bracelet and a prom dress; the great Judy Reyes (from “Scrubs” and “Jane the Virgin”), in butch-dyke splendor, with cornrows and baggy pants; and Karrueche Tran as Virginia, a sneaky little skank whom nobody trusts.

Like the “Real Housewives” shows, “Claws” can work a catfight, and it’s happy to get raw. When, in the pilot, the crew throws down with Virginia, Desna screams, “Look at you! You’re nothing but a tossed-out, pimp-less, junior Okeechobee cocksucker of the month.” (And she kicks her across the parking lot.) But in the wake of a shared murder—that classic bonding experience—Virginia joins the group. Rude as it is, “Claws” is at heart a spangled fantasy, about women building power in a crappy system, sashaying from strip club to strip mall, from tawdry oxycodone mills to the mansions bought with their proceeds.

“Claws” does occasionally lean a bit hard on the wackiness; it has a tendency to overindulge when it comes to extended montages and slo-mo. But, honestly, who cares? On a hot day when a TV viewer is looking for a fun kick, it’s an appealing summer offering: a sweet mojito with extra pulp. ♦