ON TELEVISION :NAKED AMBITION

"Welcome to Chippendales," on Hulu.

- INKOO KANG

On the inaugural night of the Chippendales club, the audience's disbelief at the sight of a half-dozen men dancing and disrobing quickly melts into delight. The financially struggling owner, Somen (Steve) Banerjee (Kumail Nanjiani), has named his Los Angeles establishment for an eighteenth-century cabinetmaker whose rococo designs, Steve claims, adorned the residence of the viceroy of India. The venture may well be the earliest of its kind: a mainstream venue for striptease, by men, for women. The visual appeal of the amateur gyrators, who swan about on a sunken stage in the center of the room, to the Village People's "Macho Man," is questionable: they sport muscles and skimpy black underwear, but also mullets and long, greasy curls. Their looks may not matter much anyway; the hooting women are thrilled just to play the part of men for a night. But, for some, a real show needs more than role reversal. "Talk about a flaming pile of trash," the choreographer Nick De Noia (Murray Bartlett) says at a later performance, when Steve asks him to leave. (Male patrons are not allowed.) In less than a decade, the two men, working in tandem, turn Steve's frantic experiment into a national sensation, and lock themselves in a rivalry so radioactive it cannot but end in mutual destruction.