Why is there such a buzz about..?

OZARK NETFLIX DRAMA

A middle-class Chicago couple become involved with a drugs cartel and run a money-laundering operation in a picturesque part of Missouri, where they bump up against the local hoods as well as their Mexican paymasters.

That’s the Ozark premise in a nutshell, but it barely does justice to the sweeping symphony of crime and corruption that this show has become. With each episode it has garnered more critical acclaim.

By any measure, Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney, above right, with Bateman and Sofia Hublitz) are monsters. They’ve killed, or had killed, several people. They facilitate an insidious trade in heroin that destroys lives. They’ve ruined their kids. Their one-time protegee turned rival, Ruth (Julia Garner), is as bad, if not worse. And yet, such is the quality of the writing and the performances, viewers are hoping these antiheroes make it to the end of the show alive.

It may be a forlorn hope. The couple ended the third series spattered in blood and being forced into a group hug by the cartel boss who had just executed a woman in front of them.

And things go downhill from there in the fourth and final series, being shown in two parts. By the mid-series finale, major characters are dead and now we have to go cold turkey waiting for the second half.

Neil Armstrong