New frothy TV drama series ‘Riches’ mixes money and blood
There’s a new TV drama about the exploits of a stylish, privileged and super-successful fictional family whose scheming members are at each other’s throats. They make the folks at “Succession” look almost functional.
“Riches,” which premieres Friday on Amazon Prime Video is set in the corporate suites of a Black-owned cosmetic giant in England whose patriarch leaves behind turmoil after dying in the first episode. As the business hangs in the balance, his different sets of children collide as they vie for control.
“I thought it was a great opportunity to write something that was fun and frothy and entertaining, but also had a bedrock of something more substantive to say about Black ownership, Black
ambition and power structures,” says Abby Ajayi, the show’s creator and writer.
The result is an enthralling mix of high-end soap opera and dynastic legal backstabbing with social commentary about everything from police racism to journalistic discrimination and corporate ethics. Deborah Ayorinde, one of its stars, has a shortcut when she describes it to friends: “Beautiful rich people behaving badly.”
Ayorinde plays Nina, one of two estranged children from her father’s first marriage, both of whom have established themselves in business in America. But their father in his final days seemed to trust them more than his English children and shockingly leaves the empire in their hands.
That adds a trans-Atlantic element to the show as Nina and her brother Simon (Emmanuel Imani) have to navigate a hostile set of siblings and an angry stepmother (Sarah Niles, the therapist from “Ted Lasso”) from their dad’s second marriage. They enjoy the good life and had expected to coast with control of the firm.
“There’s a self-sufficiency, an independence that the British characters don’t have. And so they’re going to learn from each other. I think it’s more a seesaw of the different experiences which mirror a lot of the experience I took back in my own life with my peers who move between the States and the UK and sometimes back to West Africa.”