The Consultant review: Christoph Waltz can't save Prime Video's workplace thriller

The bugs of this program come in on the level of script and story. At times, it feels as though Elaine and Craig are purposely underwritten—called on to flirt, sweat, and panic as needed—to focus all attention on the eponymous consultant. Under Quentin Tarantino’s direction (Django Unchained, Inglorious Basterds), Waltz has cornered the market on characters who are rigid yet mercurial, goofy, and repellant. The Consultant is more of the same for Waltz (who is also an executive producer), even if, more accurately, this amounts to Waltz reprising his role from Horrible Bosses 2 with a steely, vaguely supernatural twist. Patoff makes for a chilling figure in a bespoke suit, and Waltz, as ever, is a master of the line delivery. But as an adversary—or anti-hero, you be the judge—he magically generates whatever ability he needs to triumph, and that can make the storytelling stagnate.

Is this one-sidedness intended to elicit sympathy for the powerless protagonists, or does the show simply have no desire to see Patoff defeated? While The Consultant is billed as a “comedic thriller,” it’s more thriller than comedy, at least until the finale, in which the camp is kicked into high gear. After all, the show asks, “What has Patoff really done to—and for—the employees of CompWare, besides give them omelet bars and PTSD in equal measure?”

The series ends with a Muzak rendering of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” piped over a montage too full of spoilers to detail here; Waltz sings the song over the finale’s closing credits, capping the performance with a laugh. It’s a confusing moment that either makes The Consultant the bleakest, blackest satire around or a half-earnest homage to predatory capitalism. (Don’t hate the player, hate the game!) Or it’s neither. Waltz’s chuckle suggests that maybe none of it means anything, which feels like a cop-out, as though the show has signed an NDA for its own protection.

Of course, it’s not all the show’s fault that it is so difficult to tell the story of a corporate baddie without it coming out like notes from a forthcoming Ronan Farrow exposé. Regus Patoff has a special set of skills, but his depravity wouldn’t crack the front page of the Times. Terrorizing or terminating employees whose smell is off-putting in some way? Plausible. Firing any remote workers who do not arrive at the office within the hour? Sounds about right. Sexual misconduct in the workplace? C’mon.

For those seeking to laugh a little and cringe a lot, marathon The Consultant in a single, spooky sitting. Viewers looking for a career and not just a day job, though, might look elsewhere.