Review: Netflix’s wrestling comedy ‘GLOW’ is a glittering knockout

Kelly Lawler | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Alison Brie climbs the top rope in Netflix’s wrestling comedy ‘GLOW’ This is Debby Egan (Betty Gilpin), one of the misfit heroines of Netflix’s enormously appealing new series GLOW, cracking the code of how to carry herself as a professional wrestler.

The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are here, and they sure know how to put on a show.

Netflix’s newest nostalgia-tinged offering, GLOW (streaming June 23, *** out of four), is a half-hour comedy that follows the formation of a women's wrestling league in the 1980s and is inspired by the real-life brawlers. Starring Alison Brie and created by Liz Flahive (Nurse Jackie) and Carly Mensch (Orange is the New Black), the series is an especially watchable, bedazzled comedy that is, above all, a rollicking good time.

GLOW is anchored by Brie as Ruth, a struggling actress frustrated by the limited parts Hollywood offers women. She and a host of other “unconventional” women end up at an audition for the endearingly low-budget wrestling league, headed by a failed grindhouse movie director (Marc Maron) and an overenthusiastic, trust-fund-kid producer (Chris Lowell). The process is not entirely smooth, as the group of amateur women attempts, on a low budget, to make it look like they’re hurting each other without actually killing each other. But hey, their hair always looks amazing. And big.

Brie is enjoyable in the lead role, a less likable, more grating character than the good girls she played in Community and Mad Men. But it’s the women around her who truly shine, including Britney Young as Carmen, the daughter of a wrestling legend trying to make her own mark, and Betty Gilpin as Debbie, a former soap star wrangled into the ring in the middle of a personal life crisis.

The series is executive-produced by Orange creator Jenji Kohan, and it’s easy to see her touches in the large, diverse cast and the glittering, cheesy spectacle. And like Orange, GLOW is at its strongest when it focuses on that cast, digging beneath the stereotypical characters the men in charge of the production have created for them.

The show walks a fine line between recognizing that the racial and ethnic stereotypes were a big part of wrestling and having the characters on the show question the responsibility of portraying them. When a black woman (Kia Stevens) expresses discomfort at playing the “Welfare Queen,” her complaint is discussed but inevitably ignored by the director. These ideas are sometimes a little bigger than the show itself, which is a breezy binge-watch that doesn’t truly dig into them.

But GLOW succeeds almost entirely because of the affinity the writers clearly have for wrestling as a form of entertainment. The show revels in every move, every over-the-top costume, every fake shriek of pain. And even for a viewer who's never understood wrestling’s appeal, it’s hard not to get caught up in the spirit of it all. The show is at its best when it leans into its hammy, overly-hairsprayed roots and just has some genuine fun.

And if you can’t have fun with the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, who can you have fun with?