The rich, to put a spin on a biblical phrase, are always with us. In business, in politics ā but also pretty consistently on TV too. HBOās āSuccession,ā after all, took home three of the last four drama series Emmys before it wrapped its run last year. The small screen is filled with a parade of characters cossetted, burdened and driven to extremes by excessive wealth and its associated power ā but is it a story weāve seen a little too often and one that cuts a little too close to reality lately?
The answers are yes and yes, which means many series (limited and otherwise) are finding success by tapping into the lifestyles of the rich and horrible with new ways to expose those tarnished, gilded cages, including āLootā (Apple TV+); āMary & Georgeā (Starz); āGriseldaā and āThe Gentlemenā (Netflix); āThe Regime,ā āThe Gilded Ageā and āThe Righteous Gemstonesā (HBO); and āFeudā (FX). And in the process, their creators are reconsidering that their wealthy, fantastically awful protagonists not only need a makeover ā they also require some comeuppance.
āāDynastyā was popular when I was a kid,ā recalls Matthew Read, executive producer on āThe Gentlemen,ā a show about a man whose newly inherited estate houses a marijuana empire. āBut it would be hard to have an audience look up to those characters or enjoy their conspicuous consumption in the same way July 5, 2024. Something like āSuccessionā let you enjoy how unhappy these rich people are.ā
Watching the rich enjoy their privileges, at one point, was a way for the have-nots to peep into a life theyād likely never attain. āPeople are aspirational,ā says Gillian Anderson, who plays a TV journalist whose interview with Prince Andrew forces the royal to retreat from public life in Netflixās āScoop.ā āEveryone always imagines that when you get that rich or famous, that means everything is going to be OK.ā
āItās interesting to see what people do with those opportunities,ā says ChloĆ« Sevigny, who plays a wealthy heiress on āFeud: Capote vs. the Swans.ā āItās something weāre all curious about: What would I do with that money?ā
And as Julian Fellowes (creator of class-conscious historical drama āThe Gilded Age,ā who writes the show with Sonja Warfield) notes, not all rich folk need to be portrayed as horrible: āSome people who have made a lot of money are really nice and see it as their job to pull their weight. Others feel theyāve done the work and they should have fun and everyone else should push off.ā
But thatās the trick these days in focusing on characters with unimaginable wealth. With suggestions that an abundance of money actually affects peopleās thinking ā consider the āaffluenzaā criminal defense ā writers are shifting tack. Will Tracy has been doing this for a few years now, writing for āSuccession,ā penning 2022ās āThe Menuā (with Seth Reiss) and creating āThe Regime,ā a limited series about an out-of-touch ruler in a fictional country.
āThereās that madness that seeps through all [those] projects,ā Tracy says. āYou can see it in āThe Regime,ā that that amount of power and access to material resources has allowed her to create her own reality, and everyone around that person has to pretend that her reality is reality.ā
That vicarious, fantastic thrill that audiences once gleaned from stories of the rich and powerful takes on different meanings in TV series about them today. As billionaires proliferate and expand the ever-widening class divide in the real world, watching the super-rich slip away without real consequences can make a show feel hollow, not aspirational.
Some series are addressing this more directly: āGriseldaā invites audiences to identify with a female drug lord ā a gender shift Eric Newman (who co-created the limited series with Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard and Ingrid Escajeda) says puts a new spin on things. Retribution, in the end, is exacted on her through the deaths of her children, a consequence heād insisted on.
āAs storytellers, we have an obligation to show that there is no happy ending when thereās this much trauma,ā he says. āI look at criminals sympathetically, but if youāre telling a story that adheres to authenticity, these people donāt get away with it.ā
Tracyās fresh spin in āRegimeā involves a political dictator who craves love from her constituency but is way too involved in her social media perception. āWhen shows like āDynastyā were on TV ā¦ the richest people in the country were ciphers, this black box,ā he says. āNow the richest and most powerful people in the country are very visible ā¦ and they let us into their world through social media. They want us to be part of their thought process, and their thought process is, largely, insane. … We want to watch that freak show.ā
āMaryā creator DC Moore says when he was putting together his limited series about a mother and son amassing wealth and status from King James I, he recognized there is an echo of the past in todayās real world. āI feel like weāve come back to that sort of age, in the last 10, 20 years where absolute power and autocracy is on the rise and those leaders are everywhere,ā he says. āI completely had that in mind when I was writing this.ā
But not every show is aiming directly at a big, consequential ending for its characters. āWeāre in an interesting time, and people have a greater understanding of behind-the-curtain [life] and that money doesnāt solve everything,ā says āGemstonesā creator-star Danny McBride, whose show is about a family of wealthy televangelists. āBut I donāt think consequences have to be the point of [my] show. Thatās not how I view storytelling, that a certain show has to follow a certain payoff.ā
Meanwhile, thereās āLoot,ā which has gone all in on the concept of having billions fall into the lap of a protagonist who wants to do good with it ā instead of spending it, say, shooting rockets into the air or stumping for autocracy.
Co-creator Alan Yang (with Matt Hubbard) notes that the show āisnāt a polemic; weāre not trying to change everyoneās minds. … but this show is on the end of the spectrum where we believe change is possible. Itās not just one lone billionaire, itās not even every billionaire ā everyone has to pull together to fight stratification in society. Ten nice rich people are never going to change the world. But do you have any hope that people can change? Thatās baked into the show. Ultimately, thatās at the heart of what we do.ā