Intricate, deep and truly masterclass
DAVID BASCKIN
and anyone else who wants to compete in their bloodstained arena.
So far, so bad and dare I say it, so predictable. But LA Law or any of its clones of the past is not the model here.
Instead we have a serious and successful middlebrow critique of the rotten interface between speculative capital and politicised lawyers.
In a word, a sample of the pretrumpian American worldview. So much for the main men. But this is a show with main women too.
The mainest main woman is the dominatrix of the opening scene, who throughout the episodes of season 1, and now season 2, manifests as a secular witch, a potent therapist, a mother figure for powerful men, an oracle without a python.
As the wife of the state attorney and the in-house therapist, muse and Magus for the head of the hedge fund, she locates herself right in the middle of power struggles almost as potent as life or death.
The hedge fund owner’s wife is a secondary piece of work, not particularly well-developed as the story continues.
But deep in the layers of intellectual talent that make up the staff of Axe Capital, we find Taylor, an intern.
Taylor identifies, presents and lives as an ambiguously gendered person, a position that gives her shamanistic potencies in the rituals of high finance.
It takes very little time for Taylor to become a soothsayer to the “main ou” of Axe Capital, with extraordinary outcomes for both her character development and the fractal complexities of the plot.
And who plays whom I hear you ask? Maggie Siff plays the office shrink, Asia Kate Dillon plays Taylor, Paul Giamatti is the tormented and tormenting state attorney and Damian Lewis is Damian Lewis. This is not a typo. While there is no such character in the cast list, the actor Damian Lewis is so strongly drawn as fans of the early Homeland series can attest, that his performance fries the brain with its authenticity and emotional breadth. What a series. What a show.