"The Riches"

Is anybody else watching this great new show on FX? It's American, but stars Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard. They get around the usual British-actors-can't-talk-American problem in the usual way, by portraying Southerners, an accent everyone can mimic. (Hugh Laurie of "House" being the outstanding exception of course.)

They play a family of "Travelers," a real ethnic group that lives very much like Gyspies, but they're originally from Ireland and are Celtic, Catholic, and anglophone. Due to some problems with the leader of the Travelers' trailer park and a fatal road accident as they're being chased down the highway in their motor home, they take the identities of a wealthy family on their way to a new home in Florida where no one knows them, to hide from their pursuers.

It's a sitcom hybrid with a lot of pathos, the kind of TV that drives British fans of Benny Hill and Mister Bean crazy, but the kind we love over here. It's really delicious. Well written, well scripted, well cast, well acted, and on cable TV it doesn't have to obey the government nannies' rules about language and content that hamstring broadcast TV--yet doesn't go for gratuitous titillation like "Sex in the City."

These people of little education who have been hustlers and scavengers can't help adapting to their fictitious life, especially since it offers so many luxuries. And so many opportunities to use their nefarious skills. Eddie Izzard walks into the lawyer job waiting for him, and immediately becomes successful without any of the proper background. He has such good "people skills" that he's an instant master at the corporate con game, and with the help of devoted assistants he even wins all of his cases and makes partner. Minnie Driver has more trouble fitting into Florida high society, especially when she discovers that the Riches are Jewish. The kids have to go to school, where the eldest son quickly finds other boys with larceny on their mind to hang out with, but the daughter takes to the "Buffer" (that's what they call us) community, gets a boyfriend, takes her education seriously and dreams of becoming successful in honest business. The youngest boy, a cross-dresser, is delighted to find Buffer society to be so tolerant. They aren't any weirder than any of their wealthy neighbors and to their shock they fit right in and no one suspects anything.

Along the way we watch them go through some angst. The girl is expected to enter an arranged marriage with her retarded fiance (whose sister tracks them down) at sixteen and discovers to her delight that what he called "love at first sight" when she was nine and he was fourteen is called "pedophilia" in the rest of the world--then learns that the kid really is a good man as he releases her from the betrothal at her request and swears his ritual protection of her family against all harm from his clansmen. The dad--who knows something about being the object of discrimination--has to refuse to sell a home in a Christian fundie tract to a lesbian couple with a son in order to keep his entire company from going bankrupt. The mom discovers she has a mother in a nursing home (no Traveler family would ever do that to an elder), who is as delighted to be taken "home" as the kids are to have a "grandma."

As expected, seeing ourselves through the eyes of outsiders provides a lot of uncomfortable revelations and many good laughs. We learn right along with the Riches that the ethics of Corporate America are just as shady as those of the Travelers, except that there's no underlying loyalty to anyone.

Minnie Driver, whom I love, and Eddie Izzard, whom I'd never heard, are absolutely wonderful in their roles. I think this is the best new show of the year and I heartily recommend it.

 

Yes, my wife was already familiar with him and said he seemed to be most famous as a female impersonator. This role must be quite a change of pace for him but he's outstanding in it.

Interesting. Whenever we talk about our TV shows here, the Brits always complain about our taste for sitcom mixed with melodrama, like "Desperate Housewives" and "Ally McBeal." I guess "The Riches" doesn't fall into that category because it's sitcom mixed with real drama, not melodrama.

You're not trying to say that it's my people who are responsible for Mr. Bean having a feature length film? How depressing! Oh well, on the plus side we can't get enough of the Monty Python crew. They're narrating documentaries on PBS and John Cleese did a speaking tour. And our summary of the entire Middle East is "the Palestinian Liberation Front battling against the Front for the Liberation of Palestine."

Yes, they seem to have acquired exactly the same reputation the Gypsies have, even in America. The TV show freely plays on that stereotype.

 

This is on FX--basic cable--which doesn't need anywhere near as many viewers for a show to survive as NBC. Jon Stewart has become an icon and I don't think he's ever had an audience of two million.

There should be a special place in hell for network executives who decide to cancel a show while we're on the edge of our seats wondering how it's going to end. "Daybreak" and "Vanished," for instance. Or cancelling it to be PC, like "Dark Angel." And a special place for stars who can't stay sober long enough to finish a series, like Yancy Butler in "Witchblade."

He's a boy but he does a lot of cross-dressing and he's very sensitive. Perhaps that was an homage to Eddy Izzard.

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Hey, I still love Judy Collins and Quicksilver. I even pull out Hank Williams once in a while. But I'm a musician, folks, best to leave this to the professionals.

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I never heard of him before this show. It's been explained to me that the cross-dressing is just part of the act, off camera he's normal... well as normal as any entertainer.

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