Parents' Guide to Janet Jackson.

The interesting, but carefully produced docuseries discusses the highs and lows of Janet Jackson's personal and professional life from her point of view. The overall production, which was filmed over a five-year period with the help of an embedded camera crew, offers some insight into her past and current relationship with her close, but controversial, family, especially her late father and manager Joe Jackson and her brother Michael, both of whom she supports and defends. The singer also uses the opportunity to quell long-standing rumors about her life, talk about her previous marriages, and to shed light on what happened after the infamous Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime incident involving Justin Timberlake.

Janet Jackson fans will enjoy it, but despite some personal revelations about specific people and events in her private life, Janet Jackson. is careful not to take it too far. Jackson and other family members allude to some family strife and specific dysfunctions, but never cease to speak respectfully about their parents and each other. Conversations about the singer's failed romantic relationships and marriages highlight serious problems, but offer limited details, and refrain from being gossipy or tabloidish. Meanwhile, those looking for more inside information about her late brother Michael simply won't find it here. But the overall series succeeds at publicly asserting the significance of Janet Jackson's individual talent and hard work, and her on-going impact as a Black woman in the music industry.