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Fans hail 'psychotic' new show on Max as one of the funniest ever
A new documentary series that received 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from critics has sent social media users in a frenzy.
The three-part Max docuseries premiered in March at SXSW - and then made its streaming platform debut on June 2.
Its final episode became available to stream on June 9 and the documentary series has been one of the 10 most-watched Max shows for two weeks straight.
The series, which featured a leader who one X user tweeted was 'psychotic,' focuses on employees at the Texas Renaissance Festival vying to take over for its founder, George Coulam, who is looking to retire.
Ren Faire has won the hearts of viewers across the county, and its average audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a whopping 96 percent.
A new documentary series called Ren Faire series received 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes' Average Tomatometer from critics and positive reviews from X users (stock image)
The Texas Renaissance Festival takes place over eight weekends from November to January in Todd Mission.
Ren Faire director Lance Oppenheim filmed the docuseries during the festivals from the start of 2021 through the end of 2023, according to IndieWire.
It's packed full of drama between Jeff Baldwin, Louie Migliaccio, and Darla Smith—three employees from the Texas Renaissance Festival.
Baldwin served as the festival's general manager, Migliaccio was a kettle corn vendor, and Smith worked as a vendor coordinator, turned co-general manager.
The battle to take over the Texas Renaissance Fair's crown was relentless during its 100 days of filming; employees were promoted, fired, and rehired for different positions.
The docuseries has been dubbed by an X user as 'one of the more insane shows' they'd ever see and another tweeted that Ren Faire was 'one of the funniest most heartbreaking things' they had ever seen on television.
Since its release, Ren Faire has been compared to the popular Max show Succession, but that series was not what inspired Oppenheim during Ren Faire.
'When you are watching something like Vanderpump Rules, which is also sort of a succession story, and then you watch something that’s like There Will Be Blood, I was like, how can I take both of those things that I love so much,' Oppenheim told IndieWire.
'How can I basically put them in a blending machine and create its own discrete, unique experience where it’s not reality TV, it’s not a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, it’s somewhere in between, and that hopefully acknowledges that we are in this fantastical space and world.'
The series focuses on employees at the Texas Renaissance Festival vying to take over for its founder, George Coulam, who is looking to retire
Jeff Baldwin, who was its general manager, was one of three employees that was looking to take over the Texas Renaissance Festival
Viewers and critics praised Succession during its four-season run.
The show, which aired its final episode in 2023, focused on members of the Roy family that fought for control of Waystar RoyCo, which was run by founder and CEO Logan Roy.
Three of Logan's four children, Kendall, Roman, and Siobhan, were the top fighters throughout the show,
The three contenders had their own struggles and loved and hated one another throughout the entire series.
However, a family member by marriage eventually became the CEO which left one of Roy's children speechless on a park bench.
Baldwin, Migliaccio, and Smith's fight was a battle royale, which, like Succession, had surprising plot twists and an unexpected ending.
More than one of the 16 critics that gave this docuseries positive reviews compared Ren Faire and Succession to one another, and one person even praised the ending.
'A quite rewarding, even refreshing, not-overlong watch. And the ending is, in its way, happy,' wrote television critic Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times.
'A real-life, downmarket version of “Succession,” it offers a claustrophobic portrait of the festival’s eccentric and off-putting founder George Coulam,' wrote Chicago Tribune critic Nina Metz.
Louie Migliaccio was a kettle corn vendor who worked under the event's vendor coordinator and docuseries contender, Darla Smith
The Texas Renaissance Festival takes place over eight weekends from November to January in Todd Mission
X users who've tweeted about the show have hardly left negative comments about the docuseries, but many of them were diss comments that targeted Coulam.
'Any of y'all watching this Ren Faire documentary on Max about the Texas Renaissance Festival and the crazy rich old pervert that started it and who is now trying to sell it,' an X user tweeted.
He calls himself King George. What an a******. I could never work for someone like him.'
Other negative tweets made by X users were not about the Renaissance docuseries but instead about what doesn't come out of one of the festivals.
'Nothing good comes from a renaissance fair. Absolutely nothing,' an X user tweeted on June 10.