Margo’s Got Money Troubles review: we’re big fans of OnlyFans dramedy

Comparing penises to Pokémon, complete with their attack styles. Posing as a towering green alien promenading through the world. When Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ namesake (Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value) tries to fix her financial woes by joining OnlyFans, realism isn’t the key to her approach.

An aspiring writer and former literature student, she knows the importance of a great story and the power of imagination. Her new gig already trades in fantasy, she’s simply giving it a creative spin.

On the screen, Apple TV’s quick-turnaround adaptation of Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel is both a sex-positive examination of escapism and, as a warmhearted, family-focused dramedy, an exercise in it itself. A series can be both at once – and cleverly, movingly, insightfully and relatably so.

A series that sparkles

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is also anchored in reality, in both its big and small details. That balance of the fanciful and the authentic is vital to the series, the latest from prolific small-screen writer and producer David E Kelley. With Doogie Howser M.D., Picket Fences and Ally McBeal on his otherwise crime drama-heavy, four-decade-long resume, he’s well-acquainted with that mix.

That life, no matter one’s best-laid plans, always involves zigzagging in unexpected directions; that there’s constantly a new obstacle to face, regardless of when you’ve overcome the last one; that even if you’re endeavouring not to, you’re usually charting a path that someone else has carved first: all this sits at the centre of Margo’s Got Money Troubles.

In the opening credits, set to the sounds of Robyn’s dreamy Blow My Mind, a pinball bounces through a textured labyrinth of books, bills and baby bottles. The ball careening across the screen is dressed up as HungryGhost, Margo’s green alien guise, however, and the maze of platforms and voids that it navigates is revealed to be a bejewelled spaceship. It’s a sequence that recognises that many lives take a familiar route, but that should never stop anyone from striving to give it their own spin.

From college student to OnlyFans content creator

Telling stories may be her passion, but the Margo Millet of the show’s early moments couldn’t have dreamed up what lies ahead. A college freshman at California’s Fullerton, she believes that she has everything under control when a compliment about her writing from her married professor, Mark (Michael Angarano, Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy), segues into an affair.

Then she falls pregnant, decides to keep the baby and he cuts off contact, his wealthy mother Elizabeth (Marcia Gay Harden, Murder in a Small Town) brandishing an NDA. The daughter of a single mother, ex-Hooters’ waitress Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer, The Madison), Margo still thinks that she knows what’s in store.

But she can’t study with her son Bodhi to provide for. She loses her waitressing position, then struggles to afford childcare to find another job. Two of her three housemates leave, unwilling to weather a crying newborn and putting more strain on her already-limited budget.

Even with Susie (Thaddea Graham, Jay Kelly), her one remaining flatmate, helping out with looking after Bodhi, plus Margo’s ex-wrestler dad Jinx (Nick Offerman, Death by Lightning) moving in, those cashflow woes aren’t going anywhere.

Flexible hours, working from home, using her writing skills, flexing her creativity: OnlyFans becomes the only realistic option.

Watch the trailer

Specific characters, stellar casting

Kelley and his off-screen collaborators, including directors Dearbhla Walsh (Bad Sisters), Kate Herron (Loki) and Alice Seabright (Amadeus), aren’t in a rush to get Margo making content. While Euphoria’s third season can dive swiftly into its apparent ‘Cassie’s got money troubles’ storyline because it has already spent two seasons establishing the character, Margo’s Got Money Troubles starts that task afresh.

Specificity is one of its strengths; casting another. Streaming may be filled with unconventional families, related and found alike, but Margo, Shyanne and Jinx are sharply drawn and distinctive, and also as welcomely messy as everyone watching on from the couch.

Fanning’s cognisance that pluck and vulnerability are two sides of the same coin, whether earning an Oscar nomination (Sentimental Value), enlivening an android (Predator: Badlands), romancing Bob Dylan (A Complete Unknown) or commanding Russia (The Great), is a perfect fit for Margo.

Pfeiffer not only stars in one of her husband Kelley’s small-screen projects for the first time ever, but reunites with Fanning after I Am Sam, the latter’s debut film as a two-year-old, and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. As Shyanne, she’s a layered powerhouse, especially as Margo’s mum tussles with watching the daughter that she’s given everything for potentially repeat her own choices, all while attempting to reinvent her own life with her religious boyfriend Kenny (Greg Kinnear, Smoke).

In the same tender register that served him so well in his memorable episode of The Last of Us, Offerman is both warm and heartbreaking as the estranged dad and recovering addict fighting for a second chance. His Parks and Recreation-honed comedic chops also come in handy.

Indeed, Margo’s Got Money Troubles barely needs frequent Kelley collaborator Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies, The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers), one of the series’ executive producers, to swap Scarpetta’s scalpel for a stint as an ex-wrestler turned lawyer.

Exposing not just flesh but genuine emotional depth

Of Fanning, Pfeiffer and Offerman together, there can be only fans. The same is accurate of the emotional awareness that underpins Margo’s Got Money Troubles.

The stakes might feel low, given that there’s never any doubt that any family disagreements – of which there are many – will be resolved with understanding. Still, rare is the series that acknowledges that we all need an outlet to disrupt our regular routine and we’re all playing parts to get through the day, thoughtfully engaging with both truths.

Margo’s OnlyFans content, Shyanne’s new churchgoing persona, Jinx in the ring: each is an escape, a release, a performance and a necessity. Margo’s Got Money Troubles sees why with compassion, and also that its main trio aren’t alone in their yearning to holiday away from their everyday existence.

Rare, too, is a series with a clear-eyed view of the financial precariousness of writing as a profession. (Compare this with the wealthy one-book author in The Miniature Wife, who hasn’t penned another tome in over a decade.)

That Margo’s Got Money Troubles interrogates the generational patterns that so often shape lives – the family legacies that can prove unavoidable despite every effort otherwise – elevates it from entertaining and empathetic to excellent, however.

Every child of a single or young parent, or both, knows how desperately they want a different future for them. They know the sacrifices made and tolls paid for that dream. Lines like Shyanne’s ‘you ruined my life so pretty’ mightn’t often be spoken aloud, but every IRL Margo knows the sentiment, as well as the battle to stop history repeating.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is now streaming on Apple TV.

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