The average episode of The
Riches
barely delves below the surface of the series' premise, in which a family of
traveling con artists has assumed the identity of a recently deceased
upper-class couple, and are now living in a gated community in Baton Rouge. The
con-ers keep getting plunged into absurd situations that resolve implausibly,
relying on a ridiculous level of gullibility and stupidity on the part of the
con-ees. And yet at least once an episode, the family patriarch played by Eddie
Izzard stands in front of people and speaks extemporaneously, thinking on his
feet in order to persuade everyone that he knows what he's doing. In the
process, he usually convinces those viewing at home, too.
Over the course of The
Riches: Season 1's
13 episodes, Izzard and his family get increasingly enmeshed in their new
on-the-grid "buffer" lifestyle. Izzard pretends to be a real-estate lawyer,
while his kids struggle through prep school and his wife (arrestingly portrayed
by Minnie Driver) shares her narcotics addiction with her depressed next-door
neighbor (the ever-excellent Margo Martindale). And in a plot development that
should be familiar to fans of Big Love, Izzard and company also deal with the
feelings of entitlement expressed by their kinfolk, who've left their woodland
compound and come to the city, demands at the ready.
The Riches' story isn't as well-conceived
as Big Love's,
but character-wise and performance-wise, it's frequently as good as anything on
TV. Creator Dmitry Lipkin and his team of writers have found a profitable vein
to explore in the idea of what it means to be a "traveler" and what it means to
be a "buffer," as well as the question of whether people who reach a certain
level of wealth are all pretenders anyway. To that end, Lipkin is aided
immeasurably by Izzard, a likeable performer playing a character who makes his living being liked, even as he
stops just short of letting anyone get too close. The only people he really
trusts are his family, who love being crooks so much that they won't ask the
question that chews up Izzard's insides: Once we've taken what we want, why are
we never satisfied?
Key features: A funny gag reel, two pointlessly puffy
featurettes, and two sharp commentary tracks by Izzard and Lipkin.