Series Review: 'Ozark' is a heck of a ride
This Netflix crime drama series tells the story of a reluctant money launder who uproots his family to rural America in attempt to evade the law
Several episodes into Netflix's new crime drama series, Ozark, John Nix (Robert C Treveiler), a resort town sheriff, imparts some advice at a crime scene: "You know, this place has a reputation for chewing up people who come here thinking they're smarter than us."
The recipient of this advice is Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), a middle-aged and apparently successful financial adviser from Chicago who will remind viewers of that other great TV anti-hero, Breaking Bad's Walter White.
Marty's domestic life is a shambles. His teenaged children, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), are indifferent to his presence, and Wendy (Laura Linney), his wife of 22 years, is having an affair with a lawyer. Marty fantasises about sex with prostitutes.
None of his family know about Marty's real job: together with his partners, he's been laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel run by the shrewd and psychopathic Camino Del Rio (Esai Morales).
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Del Rio suspects that someone in Marty's organisation has skimmed off $8-million of his money. He pays a surprise visit to Chicago, rounds up the financial consultants and, after finding the culprit, does away with them all - except Marty who, pleading for his life, suggests they move from the city to Lake of the Ozarks, a rural resort area in Missouri where their money-laundering activities wouldn't be so visible to the local law enforcement.
Del Rio thinks it a good idea. There are conditions: Marty's got to pay back the $8-million his partner stole, and he and his family have just two days in which to kiss their old lives goodbye and set up a new one in the boondocks. His family don't take too kindly too this. Or to the disclosure from Marty about his real work.
And so the scene is set for a desperate and dark family business. Marty, a basically ethical guy who just happens to be dirty, initially struggles to get on with the locals. They may be hick, but they ain't dumb. Before long, most of the local underworld, from thuggish petty gangsters to hillbilly heroin producers, are aware of Marty's real business in town. In fact, the only person who doesn't appear to have puzzled it out is the show's rather weird undercover FBI agent, Roy Petty (Jason Butler Harner).
Ozark is a heck of a ride. The dark tone of its first episodes can be oppressive. But once we're in the country, the series takes off, and, for all its blood-soaked neo-noir, develops a quirkiness and rhythm as we follow the money.
It fuels the show's every interaction, not so much as the root of all evil, but as a relentless, malevolent force of nature. The pressures pile on Marty as he struggles to clean it by pumping it into a depressed local economy.
Some commentators have suggested Ozark is a critique of free market economics, and it makes a case that the pursuit of endless profits and the hunt for new markets is a corruptible one. Money, they argue, is not a liberator here, but an immense burden.
Certainly, when the arrival of a truckload of dirty cash inspires nothing other than utter dread in Marty, you will agree they have a point.
• This article was originally published in The Times.