Director-choreographer Bob Fosse and dancer-actress Gwen Verdon were lovers, husband and wife, parents and creative collaborators whose lives were filled with high drama (stardom, awards) and low farce (his philandering, her seeming passivity about his behavior). They were together for more projects than many viewers might realize, on stage, in the movies or both: Sweet Charity, Damn Yankees, Chicago, Cabaret. The music, the dancing, the rehearsals and struggles to make them are a huge bonus to this eight-part limited series about their lives together and sometimes apart. The main draws, though, are the superb Sam Rockwell as Fosse and Michelle Williams as Verdon. They firmly establish their physical chemistry and the way they meld minds to make Fosse’s ideas come to life on the stage and screen. How did they stay together, one way or another, for decades despite Fosse’s bad behavior? Some of the answers come from what we learn about their childhood, their teen years, long before they got together, and some from their individual ambition. As Verdon says at one point, their marriage gave her a daughter, Nicole, who also features in the series via actress Blake Baumgartner (and is an executive producer) — and also Lola, the temptress she played in Damn Yankees.
