After seeing this frequently mentioned in “Best TV shows of the 21st century“ articles, I finally watched all four seasons of this on Amazon Prime and hugely enjoyed it.
The first season is watchable but flawed. It’s obvious that they are sticking to the template of building the series around an anti-hero with a secret, like Mad Men or Breaking Bad and it feels a little cliched. I read that was part of the pitch to get the series off the ground. By the end of season 1 this starts to find its way.
In season two the attention shifts from the not hugely compelling Joe MacMillan-mystery, to its two female leads as it became clear that Mackenzie Davis was the break out star of the show and the series finds its groove. By season three this is a fantastic character driven drama about the difficulties of running a business together, while maintaining personal relationships. Seasons 3 & 4 are as good as any show of the past couple of decades. The core of the show remains the up and down friendship and business relationship between its two female characters, unusual for a show which appears to be about technology. There are no heroes and villains, every characters is complex and flawed and they all have their reasons. Even minor characters are well developed and you get a sense that they too are interesting people.
This is about the also-rans of a new industry, several times they are close to making it, only to be beaten to it by the emerging likes of Microsoft and Apple. I read an interview with the creator of the show, who said something like that this isn’t about the people who you read Wikipedia entries about, it’s about the people who get mentioned in the Wikipedia articles about others. So rather than this being a show about people staring at monitors and having eureka moments, the show is about failure and how to carry on despite of that, which makes it fertile ground for human drama.
When they made season 4, they knew it would be the last, so there are no lose ends left dangling, the show comes to a satisfying conclusion and it got dusty in the room a couple of times.
Highly recommended if you stick with it and I’m now a huge fan of Mackenzie Davis, who currently has a lead role in the new Terminator movie. I’d previously only noticed her in a small role in Blade Runner 2049, but she now appears to be a movie star in the rise.
