If you’re of a certain generation you might think you’ve heard this story before. Two women, lifelong best friends, must face their biggest challenge when one of them is diagnosed with terminal cancer. But this isn’t 1988, the two women aren’t Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey and the journey they’re about to take isn't the one in Beaches, the weepy melodrama that’s made generations of women — and their embarrassed male partners — reach for the tissues and shed rivers of tears as the credits roll to Midler singing The Glory of Love.
Don’t worry though, because the makers of Dying for Sex — a very funny, very human and unavoidably heartbreaking miniseries about two women, lifelong friends, who must face their biggest challenge when one of them is diagnosed with terminal cancer — know all about Beaches. It’s breezily brushed off in the first episode when Steve (Jay Duplass) is reminded by his wife Molly (Michelle Williams) that he cried like a baby watching the 1980s tearjerker. Molly has been told that the breast cancer she thought she'd beaten a few years ago has returned and this time it’s Stage IV, though no-one is sure how long she has left.
The 40-something Molly is about to tell her loyal husband that in spite of his dedication to caring for her, her plans for her final days won’t involve him. The realisation that big death is coming soon has made Molly think about how, in her 10 years of marriage to Steve, she’s never even had a little death — and Steve hasn’t touched her for the last three years.
What Molly wants is sex and orgasms and as many of them as she can get, with as many different people as possible in the time she has left. Her mind made up, it’s goodbye to Steve and hello to Nikki (Jenny Slate), Molly’s best friend, true love and the only person she wants to accompany her on her final journey of self-discovery.
Based on the hit podcast created by best friends Molly Kochan and Nikki Boyer in the last months of Kochan’s life, the eight-episode series adaptation created by Kim Rosenstock and Elizabeth Merriweather delivers the expected “heartbreaking, bittersweet, risqué, hilarious” adjectives, but it’s also more than any of these words can convey. In spite of its title, Dying for Sex isn’t a titillating show, nor is it completely focused on making dirty jokes at the expense of its emotional arcs. It’s a show that, like real life, is full of absurdity, dark psychological dramas and inescapable tragedy. It proves, ultimately, to be heartwarming, inspirational and tear-inducing as a result of both its jokes and its emotional impact.
Molly’s journey constantly reminds her of the battle between her desires and fantasies, and the limits imposed on her body by the disease that no amount of treatment seems able to hold at bay. In spite of this, she manages to have one hell of a final ride — her erotic journey of exploration taking her into the worlds of BDSM, cosplay, masturbation, topping and forcing her to confront a dark incident from her past that’s driven a wedge between her and her mother (an expectedly excellent Sissy Spacek). She may also discover that, in spite of her dedication to emotionally detached sex, she can still find some too-late but very real and touching connection in the most unlikely places.
The nuances and complex emotional threads of the show’s 30-minute episodes of narrative are carried ably by the performances. The last time Williams starred in a miniseries, the five-time Oscar nominee won an Emmy for her efforts in 2019’s Fosse/Verdon and it’s looking like she’d be well within her rights to make some space in her lounge for a second one after her performance here. Committed and evocative in its portrayal of the big swings between ecstatic fulfillment and dark introspection, Williams’ Molly is a fully-realised, complex, infuriating and engaging woman whose embracing of her journey makes you hopeful for a happy ending.
She’s excellently supported by Slate, whose Nikki is both optimistic and free-spirited, while also struck by crushing self-doubt and fear in her quieter moments when the thought of what life will be like without her friend consume her. Jay Duplass’ Steve is an aside but his relationship with Molly is a modern one and he’s still there when needed. The just-so-much-bigger-than-everyone-else Rob Delaney does some of his finest work yet as Molly’s “neighbour guy,” whose awkwardness hides some dark kinks of his own.
The show goes by in a whirl but it leaves you with a satisfying mix of joy, grief, why-nots and whys that make you feel that you’ve lived Molly’s rollercoaster of a final farewell as fully as she did. It’s not a descendant of Beaches so much as it is an improvement on it — women-power-positive, sex-positive and in these disheartening times, a celebration of humanity in all its absurdity and weirdness.
- Dying for Sex is streaming on Disney+.
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