Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Secrets Of Playboy’ On A&E, A Docuseries About The Dark Side Of Hugh Hefner And His Magazine Empire

Secrets Of Playboy, directed by Alexandra Dean, is a ten-part docuseries that takes a look at the darker side of the Playboy empire, and how the late Hugh Hefner, portrayed as a defender of sexual freedom and the 1st amendment, set up an environment for his “girlfriends” that felt more like a controlling cult than anything else.

SECRETS OF PLAYBOY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Holly Madison, PJ Masten and Sandra Theodore get ready for their interviews to start. “I just want to help,” Theodore says.

The Gist: Via interviews with various women who have been in Hefner’s life over the decades, along with allies of his who saw his generosity and friendship, a picture of Hefner emerges that is certainly different than the picture that Playboy’s publicity machine painted of Hef, who died in 2017 at the age of 91.

The first episode centers mainly on the environment that Hef set up at the Playboy mansion in Beverly Hills, which he bought in 1971 and moved into in 1975. Most of this was told from the perspective of Jennifer Saginor, the daughter of Hefner’s personal doctor; she more or less lived in the mansion after her parents split up when she was 6, and she wrote a book about the experience.

And while her early years were filled with images of people having fun and what she thought of as a family atmosphere, she started seeing the dark side when she was in her teens and fell in love with one of Hef’s girlfriends at the time. She reveals an incident with Hef and the girlfriend that led to Hefner and his people to persuade TV stations to cancel promotional appearances she made for the book 20 years later.

The second episode is the one that has generated the most headlines up until this point; it mostly revolves around Holly Madison, Hef’s main girlfriend through most of the 2000s and the star of the E! reality show The Girls Next Door. Madison made her way into Hef’s circle of girlfriends in 2001, and because she had a hard time connecting with people (she diagnosed herself as having ASD), she enjoyed the camaraderie that these women had with each other.

She became good friends with one of her Girls Next Door co-stars, Bridget Marquardt, but felt extra pressure as Hef’s main squeeze. She couldn’t have a social life outside the mansion, sex was mechanical and weird, and Hef himself was very controlling and often turned his other girlfriends against his main one. Of course, people in Hef’s corner felt that Madison could have left at any time during her seven years at the mansion. But she felt that the environment was closer to a cult and she was in more of a “Stockholm Syndrome situation” than anyone realized.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The tone of Secrets Of Playboy is pretty much the same as Seduced: Inside The NXIVM Cult.

Our Take: What Secrets Of Playboy is most effective at doing is consolidating all the information that has dribbed and drabbed out about the dark side of Hugh Hefner’s empire over the past 15-20 years. Some of the most interesting information that we’ve seen come out of the first two episodes of the docuseries is more about the disinformation machine that Hef created around him to protect him over the six decades he ran his empire.

Yes, some of the stuff that Madison, Saginore, Theordore and other women who were in Hef’s inner circle was pretty disgusting to hear. But, since Madison and others have talked about a lot of these experiences in books and other interviews, the info they give is just an extension of what they’ve talked about already.

The fascinating parts to us are when image vs. reality collide, like the idea that Hef had cameras and microphones everywhere in the mansion, including on the bodies of the staff, and that he’d invite members of the media to parties at the mansion so he could catch them in indelicate situations, the better for him to blackmail journalists into shaping their coverage.

Because, let’s face it: Was the image of Hef in his last decade or so one that was all that positive? An old man whose family helmed a dying magazine; a caricature who still wore his pajamas in public and had a harem of young women that the public knew was not with him for anything resembling keeping up appearances. Hef’s image took plenty of hits, so to hear that he was a controlling, verbally and emotionally abusive sort doesn’t seem all that shocking. The fact that he kept most of what he did out of the press is the most intriguing piece of this puzzle.

There’s a lot of the Playboy empire to examine, from the Bunnies at the Playboy Clubs to the scandals the company endured going all the way back to at least the seventies. There’s a reason why this is a ten part series. It’ll be especially interesting to hear from Theordore and others who were in his circle when Hef was younger. But with Madison’s episode, we wonder if the most explosive of the allegations have already been revealed.

Sex and Skin: Well, the show is about Playboy. But since it’s on basic cable, all the naked parts of the pictures from the magazine are blurred out.

Parting Shot: Masten addresses Hef directly to the camera saying that he didn’t care about the women he exploited and his supposed feminism was a lie. Too bad Hef has been dead for five years.

Sleeper Star: Miki Garcia, a Playmate who became Playboy‘s director of promotions, seems like she’s going to be one of the interviewees on Hefner’s side, but then her view of Hef takes a turn, because she just knows too much.

Most Pilot-y Line: There are some reenactments of Saginor as a child, watching a mansion party from right by a set of stairs. It’s intercut with real footage of the party and made to look vintage. If Dean wanted us to think that was actual footage, she failed at that mission.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Secrets Of Playboy does go into aspects of Hugh Hefner and his empire that people may not have heard before if they’re not following people like Madison closely. We just wonder if the revelations will start becoming repetitive or less shocking as the series examines each part of Hefner’s life and the brand he started.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.