“The Riches,” an F/X drama series about a family of traveling con artists that assume the identities of upper-class suburbanites, was one of those shows I always meant to get into. There was great buzz around the first season, and rave reviews for the performances of Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard as the mother and father of this colorful family of crooks. I just never found the time to watch, and it sort of fell off my radar until I stumbled upon these shorts. Suddenly, with renewed interest, I wanted to catch up.
I found myself perusing Hulu, the NBC/Fox streaming video portal that launched this year and features hundreds of full episodes of series new and old, all free and supported by minimal advertising. I streamed the pilot online and was immediately hooked. Not wanting to watch the whole series in front of my laptop, I picked up the box set of season one on DVD over the weekend and plowed through that in three days. This lead me back to Hulu, where I caught up on season two in time to record the last few episodes on my DVR. What started on my iPod lead me through my computer and back to my television.
The series follows the Malloys, a family of Irish Travellers, portrayed in the series as trailer-park gypsy folk that make their living scamming “normal” people (or “buffers,” in Traveller-speak). After picking their mother up from jail, where she did a stint for credit-card fraud and ended up a meth addict, they steal from their family encampment and go on the run in order to avoid an arranged marriage for their daughter. While being pursued by fellow Travellers, the Malloys encounter a wealthy couple that has perished in a grisly car accident. Unable to save the couple, the Malloys push their car into a swamp and assume their identities. The couple, Doug and Cherien Rich, was on its way to begin a new life in an affluent gated community in Louisiana. So when the Malloys show up at the house, every- one assumes they are their new neighbors, the Riches.
The premise goes out on a limb for sure, but if you’re willing to buy into the basic conceit, it’s a fantastic ride. Simultaneously dark and funny, the series reveals the marvels and mayhem of upper-class suburban life through the eyes of a lovable band of road-weary criminals. Taking on the role of Doug Rich, Izzard’s character gets a job as a powerful real-estate attorney, while Driver’s Cherien Rich scams her kids into an exclusive private school and takes the roll of a suburban homemaker.
As the family sinks deeper into their new life in a web of escalating lies, with the threat that they will be discovered at any moment constantly looming, some strange things happen. They find that almost everyone is lying about something. The little lies that people tell each other and themselves everyday are all magnified by the Malloys’ big lie. But the lies start to bear a ring of truth: Doug probably would have made a great lawyer after all, Cherien enjoys the amenities of a lavish home, and the kids take to private school in their own ways.
TV networks have been jumping into the digital space and pretending they know what they’re doing for years.
This isn’t altogether dissimilar to how the TV industry has been dealing with emerging technology for a while. In the same way that the Malloys are faking their way to success as the Riches, TV networks have been jumping into the digital and pretending they know what they’re doing for years. Major media companies had to show Wall Street that TV networks were still relevant. So, without much of a real plan, they started throwing a lot of money at broadband video players, social networking sites, and mobile phone technology.
The record industry had really screwed up the whole Internet thing in the ’90s, when they treated Napster as a criminal enterprise rather than a potential business model, and record companies’ plunging profits over the last decade became a cautionary tale for the worst way to deal with new technology—to ignore it. So, whether or not they really knew how, TV networks went out of their way to embrace new technology and evolve their businesses. Though there will always be a lot of trial and error in adapting old mediums to new technology, the whole process is starting to payoff. TV shows downloaded from iTunes are becoming a significant source of revenue for networks, and it’s becoming clear that allowing viewers to stream full rather, it taps into new audiences.
“The Riches” will probably have to end badly for the Malloys. Despite their ability to fake their way to success, and the realization that everyone is lying about something, their whole odyssey through the seedy underbelly of the American elite is built on the deaths of the real Riches. The compounding web of deceit must unravel eventually, because it was cursed from the beginning. I believe, however, that television’s fate will be a happier one. The way I was drawn into “The Riches” through a web of seemingly incongruous media is beginning to look a lot like a series of legitimate marketing strategies.
If you don’t watch television anywhere but the living room set, maybe you should give it a try. It can lead to some fascinating places. For me, the surprise was being led back to my TV.
If you don’t watch television anywhere but the living room set, maybe you should give it a try. It can lead to some fascinating places. For me, the surprise was being led back to my TV.
Tom Hoban works in cable television in New York City. Ask him why he thinks Aristotle would have loved “Saved by the Bell.”
Illustration by Loren Erdrich: www.okloren.com