What A Man in Full might be lacking in satisfying thematic explorations, it makes up for in an ensemble cast of characters chewing the Atlanta scenery with vim and, occasionally, terrifying authenticity.
The new Netflix prestige drama is stacked with names – Jeff Daniels, Lucy Liu, Diane Lane, William Jackson Harper – who make up the Georgia city's upper echelons in the business and political world.
Jeff Daniels, with his best Southern-belle drawl, stars as Charlie Croker. Once the accent ceases to be distracting, we quickly see Croker for what he is: a pugnacious, bullying, sweating real-estate tycoon whose "fake it 'til you make it" approach has landed him in oodles of debt.
Croker is a welcome reprieve from the charm offensive billionaires we've lately had on TV. Succession cast the literal Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgård) as their tech magnate Lukas Matsson. While he had outlandish proclivities – sex while listening to podcasts on noise-cancelling headphones, sending his own blood to women he liked – he was still Tarzan. They even let him flash his abs at one point.
Then there was The Morning Show. The decidedly lower-prestige third season featured Mad Men's Jon Hamm as a glowed-up billionaire amalgamation of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. His ludicrous charisma upgrade Paul Marks managed to sleep with Jennifer Aniston and go to space with Reese Witherspoon in the space of a couple episodes.
He was – spoiler alert for a rather predictable plot point – revealed to be the villain of the piece. But his moustache-twirling was only unveiled at the very end of the show and there weren't any real repercussions anyway.
Enter TV's latest and greatest of the unelected global aristocracy we live under: Charlie Croker. A Man in Full briefly tries to razzle-dazzle us with his life, and there are enviable elements. Shania Twain herself gives a vocal powerhouse performance at his 60th birthday party. He toots around on a G5 private jet.
But once we get deeper into Croker and his rather one-note cocksure macho psychology, there's nothing aspirational or enticing about it.
He frolics around with a vicious snake, sweats through umpteen shirts and is easily outsmarted by his sharp, manicured second wife Serena (Sarah Jones) – who is at least half the age of her predecessor Martha (Diane Lane). With various body ailments, he's falling apart through much of the six-part show.
Even in his final moments on the show – no spoilers, but we do see a glimpse of it at the very start of the miniseries – Croker is ridiculous.
Worse but better yet, the whole premise revolves around his financial failings. The word "fiduciary" comes up a lot, because his New South empire is in the hole to the banks for nigh on $1.5 billion. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, he tells us via Serena. "Debt can be kind of a badge in business," he says, through the drawl. "Tesla's got a debt of four billion, Apple 100 billion. You gotta borrow to grow. You gotta grow to survive."
Much like Succession's Mattson, with his puffed-up India subscriber numbers, Croker's wealth is built on a fat load of nothing. He may have the jet, Shania Twain's serenade and even the quail plantation for hunting, with a pugnacious attitude to boot, but he doesn't have anything of substance beneath the razzmatazz.
The show, like Croker, doesn't have much to say beyond this bluster. But where Succession and The Morning Show leaned into the power of big billionaire energy, with A Man in Full we have someone tumbling into its pitfalls. It's a salient point in a drama at least trying to satirise American hubris in a Big Short or Wolf of Wall Street vein.
Billionaires are all too powerful and have an impact on the world that becomes more harmful the richer they become. In that backdrop, a TV depiction of them with the good looks of Tarzan and the charm of Madison Avenue's finest beggars belief.
Crooked Croker is undoubtedly a more refreshing incarnation. Although, it's still depressing that his bulldozer confidence and self-professed dick-swinging catapulted him to a Forbes-and-Shania-Twain level of success in the first place. It's only in the show's 10-day span that starts to collapse into the void underneath.
A Man in Full is available to stream on Netflix.
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Deputy TV Editor
Previously a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape for Digital Spy, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas.
When she's not bingeing a box set, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
