Wednesday 15 December 2021

Billions - Series 1 (2016)

Created by Brian Koppelman, David Lavien & Andrew Ross Sorkin (no relation).

Damien Lewis is a billionaire, so he must have done something wrong (he meets his solicitor in an underground car park, so that looks dodgy to begin with). Certainly the DA Paul Giamatti thinks so, and begins to attempt to build a case (he, by the way, is a masochistic kink.) Things are somewhat complicated by the fact that his wife, played by Maggie Siff (Mad Men), works for the billionaire.

But is this essentially to be cat and mouse over four seasons? In which case, are we to bother? Or might the characters begin to change, Lewis becoming a better person, Giamatti resorting to unorthodoxy to pursue his prey? 

With Malin Ackerman as Mrs Billionaire (with working class roots), Toby Leonard Moore (DA's No.2), David Costabile (Billionaire's No. 2), Condola Rashad (up-and-coming in DA Dept.)

Axe has never seen Citizen Kane, ironically, and when he does set it up in the screening room, he then keeps interrupting the beginning.

It portrays a horrible environment of jerks who are perpetually slapping each other's bodies. But really comes into its own in the final episode with Axe and 'Dollar' Bill Kelly AuCoin's pretend argument in his office, and the revelation of a double twist featuring supposed plant David Cromer. (It takes $40 million to educate and house two children, apparently. Well it does in this rarefied world.)




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