Made for Love; HBO Max Based on: Alissa Nutting

Made for Love; HBO Max
Based on: Alissa Nutting, Made for Love

Alissa Nutting’s Made for Love is a novel in which a woman named Hazel escapes her marriage to tech billionaire Byron Gogol—who fetishizes surveillance and data (naturally)—learns that her estranged father is in a relationship with two sex dolls, and teams up with a con man with a reluctant dolphin fetish. It’s wild and funny enough that news of its adaptation made me both excited and nervous. Luckily, I thought HBO’s adaptation (on which Nutting herself was a writer) preserved an admirable about of the book’s delightfully subversive energy. The cast is fantastic—Cristin Milioti and Ray Romano are predictably great as Hazel and her father, Billy Magnussen is a very funny and unsettling Byron, and Patti Harrison, who I will watch in literally anything, is perfect as Hazel’s childhood friend, Bangles. While Jasper hadn’t shown up by the finale, the show laid plenty of dolphin groundwork, and a second season is on the way.  –Jessie Gaynor, Senior Editor