How the sticks unravel two lives
Two guys in the country, both with dirty secrets that see them come undone.
Traditionally, people move from the city to the regions for a quieter, less stressful pace of life. But on television, the reverse is often true.
New United States drama Ozark (now available on Netflix) opens with financial advisers Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) and Bruce checking out some potential new offices for their growing city business.
But when things go awry with some less-than-legal financial services they’ve been providing to a Mexican cartel, Marty’s life is turned upside down. He’s given a week to sell his house, get out of town and head to ‘‘Redneck Riviera’’ – the Lakes of Ozark – with a money-laundering task of enormous proportions. Accompanying him, reluctantly, are his family: unfaithful wife Wendy (Laura Linney); disgruntled teenage daughter; and worried young son.
Pretty soon they’re renting a house they have to share with an elderly skinny-dipper; someone is leaving carcasses in their front yard and there’s the mission to find organic pistachio icecream in this rural backwater. All while Marty is figuring out how to launder money for his cartel bosses. He talks a good game, pretending to be an ‘‘angel investor’’ but the cynical folk of Ozark aren’t easily duped and he’s got a suspicious FBI agent watching him.
This is a great story, brilliantly told. It’s violent and quirky and darkly humorous with some great lines and intriguing characters. Marty’s life effectively unravels in the first episode but it pushes him from a jaded, urban professional to a situation where he is fighting for survival. And it’s not just Marty’s story that draws you in. Laura Linney is great as wife Wendy, who soon rises to the challenge of this new life and starts throwing carcasses at rednecks like she was born to it.
A middle-aged, mild-mannered professional family man who gets embroiled in the criminal underworld and manages to hold his own ... Yep, I know that’s a plot with a familiar
Breaking Bad ring to it. But comparisons are unfair. Marty isn’t Walter White and this is a drama that stands on its own. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen this year. Love it.
New drama Delicious (Tuesdays, 9.30pm, UKTV) is also set far from the city lights – in rural Cornwall. This is where celebrity chef, Leo Vincent (Iain Glen) runs his fabulous restaurant – ‘‘My life is perfect,’’ he tells us in the opening moments. But it’s not going to stay that way.
And like Marty in Ozark, Leo’s life soon unravels but in a very different way. The first episode is crammed full of drama – there’s adultery, betrayal, a restaurant reviewer, disgruntled adult children, a death – the list goes on. And yet somehow, it manages to feel like nothing has really happened. Like it is just a sort of aimless, meandering story with some lovely countryside, funny Dawn French and some lovingly lingering shots of food. I felt hungry rather than entertained by the time the credits rolled.