Stream It Or Skip It: ‘George & Tammy’ on Showtime, Where Michael Shannon And Jessica Chastain Are Terrific As Country’s First Power Couple

The six-episode limited series George & Tammy shared its Showtime debut with an appearance in the splashy timeslot right after a new episode of Yellowstone on Paramount Network, and going forward, episodes will drop weekly on Showtime before migrating to Paramount+. It’s a strategy clearly designed to show off the name-brand talent gathered for here, with Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain as the country music superstars supported by the likes of Walton Goggins, Steve Zahn, Katy Mixon, Pat Healy, and David Wilson Barnes.

GEORGE & TAMMY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: “In the late 60s, George Jones was the undisputed king of country music…but he was slipping,” reads the graphic floating over an image of a single microphone set before a bank of stage lights. “Then he met a former hairdresser just starting to climb the charts. Her name was Virginia Pugh, better known as Tammy Wynette…”

The Gist: It’s Jones (Michael Shannon) we meet first. With Roy Acuff (Tim Blake Nelson, appearing as a High Lonesome mirror to his Buster Scruggs character) belting out tunes onstage at the Grand Ole Opry, “The Possum” is drunk as a skunk backstage, flushing his cash down a toilet. But with some propping up from enabling manager Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery ( (a bewigged and hatted-up Walton Goggins), Jones soon joins Acuff for a harmonizing run through “The Race Is On,” and excited to catch his set are promising country singer Tammy Wynette (Jessica Chastain) and her songwriter husband Don Chapel (Pat Healy). “True love is scratched for another’s sake,” Jones sings. “The race is on and it looks like heartache, and the winner loses all…”

When her manager Billy Sherrill (David Wilson Barnes) arranges an introduction, Tammy is initially unimpressed with George’s excesses and unprofessionalism. But she covers for him when his angry wife calls, and is still a bit starstruck by the man whose records she’s treasured for years. The plan is still for her to get both of them in the George Jones fold, Tammy and Don. But the star, an unrepentant drunk, nevertheless knows talent when he hears it. ““3,000 Dons a day” move to Nashville, George says, and they meet “3,000 pretty girls a day.” And they’re all committed to each other if it helps them make the grade in Hat City. “But not one of ‘em’s you.”

At a gig in Knoxville, Tammy sings a heartbreaking version of her hit  “Apartment #9,” and George and his band join her on “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad” and “Why Baby Why.” He visits the studio where she’s recording “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” And married George is now brazenly flirting with married Tammy while pretending to encourage Don’s Nashville aspirations. Tammy’s career is on the way up. George is a country star who hasn’t had a number one in a while. And they’re both taken aback by their instant chemistry. Is the meeting of George and Tammy a true love moment? Or a sad country song just waiting to be written?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Cynthia Ervo’s Queen of Soul in Nat Geo’s limited series Genius: Aretha encountered her share of angry husbands and her agency as a performer being threatened or diminished because of her gender. And though no firm release date has been released, anticipation is building for Daisy Jones & the Six, the upcoming Prime Video limited series starring Riley Keough as the leader of a fictional 1970s rock group with Fleetwood Mac overtones. 

Our Take: Tammy and George are flirting mildly while she leans on her previous profession to wash and fix his hair. “What kind of Christian are you? I’m gonna stop doing your hair, you dirty old, married Pentecostal.” The chemistry between Tammy Wynette and George Jones was immediate – later, on stage, their easy banter and effortless harmonizing instantly make the Klieg lights burn brighter – and in George & Tammy that’s driven home by the performances of Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain, performances that must remain pivotal if the center of this otherwise pretty standard-feeling biographical drama is going to reach elevation. As Jones, Shannon is as much the irascible drunken lout as he is quietly gallant and magnetic under the lights, while Chastain immediately captures the imperfect promise in Wynette’s singing, the underlying sadness that lent her songs such gravity. She’s also a seasoned realist about the ways of men, and that pragmatism is deployed in a hurry once she gets a load of George Jones’ antics. Chastain and Shannon illustrate well the dangerous waters these two were already navigating before they ever upended their lives to marry and become “Mr. and Mrs. Country Music.” 

As the arc of the music biopic is a tale as old as the oldest country song, there’s sure to be a hunk or two or three of boilerplate stuff in George & Tammy. But the supporting cast is a solid one, too, and it seems more than willing to frame its titular duo with as much of their flaws as it wants to with their fame and flourish. Not only that, but there’s admirable attention paid here to the music itself – To perfect their singing, Chastain and Shannon with vocal coaches and T Bone Burnett – and that’s nice to both hear and see in a music biopic.

Sex and Skin: When Tammy is brought to visit George Jones in his Nashville hotel room, he’s been entertaining two young women in various states of undress, neither of whom are his wife. 

Parting Shot: George Jones has arrived at Don and Tammy’s place for dinner. Don is drunk, and George is doing that thing where he openly flirts with Tammy while somehow also playing the southern gentleman and charming the kids. George sarcastically sings a few bars of “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” and undercuts Don’s angry attempts at indoctrinating table manners. This dinner is not going to end well, no matter how tasty the breading on Tammy’s chicken fried chicken. 

Sleeper Star: His character will become instrumental later on in George & Tammy. But a gloriously-hairpieced Steve Zahn does make a brief but memorable appearance here as Hee Haw music director, songwriter, record producer, and session player George Richey.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I believe you have to live a song to make it good,” and her statement, along with his being transfixed by her aching performance of “Apartment #9,” is all George Jones has to hear before knowing that Tammy Wynette is going to change his life personally and charge up his flagging country music career.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The necessary biopic parts are all here. But George & Tammy is buoyed remarkably by its two terrific leads, with Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain embodying the best and worst about the country stars as both distinct individuals and two people in a loving but combative celebrity relationship.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges