'Swarm' review: Stinging profile of a superstar's superfan

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The seven-episode Prime Video series "Swarm" begins with a bold declaration: "This is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is intentional."

It's the story of Andrea "Dre" Green (Dominique Fishback), a superfan of the fictional popstar Ni'Jah (Nirine S. Brown). Dre runs the Twitter account for Ni'Jah's big fans, dubbed the "Swarm." She bonds with her close friend and former foster sister Marissa (Chloe Bailey) over their shared love for the icon and just generally constructs her entire life around Ni'Jah's music, image and touring schedule. She also painstakingly monitors social media for anyone who says anything negative about her hero.

When Dre's life spins out of control, for reasons best left to the viewer to discover, her obsessiveness grows increasingly dangerous.

"Swarm" is a star-packed production: Co-creators are Donald Glover ("Atlanta") and playwright/TV writer Janine Nabers. The writing staff includes Malia Obama, while other co-stars range from Billie Eilish to Paris Jackson to Rory Culkin.

MY SAY There's no ambiguity when it comes to the real-life model for Ni'Jah. After a scandal involving her husband, a fellow musical superstar, she drops a stunning, surprise album and music video in the middle of the night. A video emerges of a dispute in an elevator, involving her husband and her sister. A swarm of bees serves as a recurring motif, including a beehive.

Beyoncé obsessives don't need it spelled out for them, but even audiences who aren't necessarily card-carrying members of the Beyhive (or Taylor's Swifties, Lady Gaga's Little Monsters, Rihanna's Navy, or Nicki Minaj's Barbz, etc.) should appreciate the extent to which "Swarm" vividly draws on what this sort of superfandom looks like in the social-media age.

"Dre" takes extreme actions to show her love for Ni'Jah, often captured in harrowing and unflinching detail. But they derive from an authentic place: this person and her music provide a voice for someone who is voiceless, a measure of peace from staggering internal turmoil, and, most significantly, a deep and unending connection to Marissa, the most important person in her life.

It's a difficult role for Fishback ("Judas and the Black Messiah"), given that Dre has been written as less of a full-fledged human than a heightened archetype: the familiar social-media personality that will immediately leap to the defense of their icon in any context, at any time, and with a staggering ferocity.

A viewing of the first three episodes reveals that the character does contemptible things. She responds to stressors in inexplicable ways and remains persistently closed off from the people who come in and out of her life.

But a sharp, introspective style — relying on disturbing ambient sounds, changing color gradients and consistent shifts to Dre's first-person perspective — allows for the audience to have a way in.

And Fishback's performance, mysterious and unsettling while also tapping into measures of deep pain and sadness, completes the picture.

BOTTOM LINE A sharp satire of superfandom with a real human face.