Ozark: Netflix’s dark and compelling take on criminal lives
Pick of the day: Ozark, streaming on Netflix.
Pick of the day: Ozark, streaming on Netflix.
The praise for this dark new series is flowing thick and fast — all of it deserved. Ozark, created by Bill Dubuque (The Accountant), is a 10-episode series that debuts today.
It has been described as The Wire for Missouri, a worthy successor to Bloodline, and a riff on the Breaking Bad nice-guy-turned-gangster subgenre. (It also has the exact same conceit as Canadian comedy Schitt’s Creek, demonstrating that the difference between humour and tragedy is merely emphasis.)
Jason Bateman, best known for his role as Michael Bluth in Arrested Development, and further back, as David Hogan in the mid-80s sitcom Valerie, here plays Marty Byrde, a sober — even dull — family man and financial adviser living and working in Chicago.
The secret ingredient to his success is that he and his partner Bruce (Josh Randall) have been laundering money for drug lord Camino Del Rio (Esai Morales). When Bruce is caught skimming off the top their arrangement is imperilled, and Byrde’s only option is to relaunch the operation in Missouri’s Ozarks.
His wife Wendy, played by Laura Linney, is neither in the dark about her husband’s affairs nor entirely blameless in her own conduct. But their children, played by Sofia Hublitz and Skylar Gaertner, are recalcitrant and confused about the drastic changes to their life.
Naturally, the region is not the bucolic tabula rasa it might seem to outsiders. While the landscapes are stunning, they obscure an existing ecosystem of criminality.
Bateman, who also directed several episodes, is outstanding. He says: “I’m always drawn to playing the person that is most easily relatable to the audience. I like having the responsibility to process things for the audience and spit out, in words or in expression, how the audience could or should feel about what they’ve just seen or heard.
“And that was easy to do with this guy.”
Ozark is compelling, necessary viewing.
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