Oil soap opera never gushes despite Don’s best shot

episodes he has reignited his relationship with Jules, his old barkeep girl friend who is also doing Hap’s wayward son Wick, who incidentally tried to kill his father.

Aesthetically speaking, the best thing about Blood & Oil is Hap and Carla’s beautiful home that resides next to a picturesque river that makes you think Grand

somewhere in the deep south of Central Otago.

The men dress like cowboys and the women wear tight jeans and itty bitty leather jackets and hang out in bars that look like Armadillos did when it first hit Wellington.

Johnson has weathered well and is plausible as a dastardly oil baron who gives off an alpha male order vibe, coming out on top of every deal, wickedly outsmarting the young and naive Billy who, along with his high school sweetheart Cody, is trying to live the outdated American Dream.

The dialogue is corny – Hap advises his son: ‘‘A good oil man never shows his emotion’’, while every scene seems to end with the punctuation of amazing heterosexual sex, and an oil well splutters into action, but never really gushes.

When Billy loses his shirt on a failed oil deal he went in on with Hap, he teams up with an old timer named Clifton who wants revenge on Hap real, real bad. Clifton’s got a pretty grand daughter called Emma on her way to breaking-up Billy’s rock solid relationship with his pregnant wife.

Hap’s business-savvy daughter Lacey, whom he adores as opposed to his son whom he loathes, is having it off with Hap’s driver, who is currently conniving corporate fraud on Hap