FX's Pose is unlikely any previous TV show -- a fact that it knows, relishes and celebrates

Variety

The Ryan Murphy co-created 1980s ball scene drama is simply revolutionary, says Caroline Framke. "FX’s new drama devotes the kind of attention (and budget) that typically goes to conflicted straight male antiheros to the glittering grunge of New York City’s ballroom scene circa 1987," she says. "It centers LGBTQ communities whose ambitions are so much bigger than the infinitesimal spaces society affords them. It weaves stories of triumph and steel will with the creeping terror of the AIDS epidemic that constantly reminded everyone that this one wild night could very well be their last. Its stars are lost queer teens, hopeless romantic sex workers, defiant trans matriarchs." As Murphy's last FX series before heading to Netflix, she says, "Pose’s devotion to queer spectacle makes for a fitting final note, especially given Murphy’s purported business ethos of extending a hand beyond his own experiences to lift up others that would have a much harder time getting noticed without him."

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• Pose is radical even in a RuPaul's Drag Race world: "What that reality show doesn’t do, and should not be expected to, is dig deeply into the social, class and racial politics that align against a marginalized community determined to live and be treated as first-class citizens nevertheless," says Melanie McFarland.
• Pose is the Fame we all wanted Rise to be: "Groundbreaking yet traditional, unique yet wonderfully old-fashioned"
• It feels like Angels in America or Netflix's G.L.O.W. by re-examining the 1980s to better understand today
• Co-creator Steven Canals writes of the dificult journey bringing the groundbreaking trans series to TV
• Ryan Murphy and casting director Alexa L. Fogel spent six months in the trans community to make sure it got the casting right