The Riches

NYPress.com

GYPSIES, BRITS & THIEVES
To ‘The Riches’ go the spoils

If you are an up-and-coming cable channel with aspirations of grandeur, there are several assets which you might seek out: recognizable stars with respected resumés, scripts that analyze American cultural values (both hidden and exploited), comedy-drama scenarios which borrow liberally from the successes of HBO and Showtime and, of course, gags involving artificial limbs. FX took all of these elements, threw in a cross-dressing adolescent for good measure, and arrived at The Riches—an overwritten carnival of suburban neuroses, marital squabbles, disturbing pasts and kind-hearted criminals. Fortunately, it’s as catty as it is calculated.

Leading the cast are Eddie Izzard, as Wayne, and Minnie Driver as Dahlia, husband-and-wife gypsies, or “travelers’ to use the modern vernacular. Their backstories are shady, their future dependent upon their skill sets as they set up shop with assumed identities in a posh, residential Louisiana neighborhood. Izzard turns in a compelling and complex performance, but speaks in a dialect that had me completely distracted throughout the first two episodes. A British actor playing a Southerner of Irish descent, he ultimately settles into an accent that sounds a bit like Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecter. Driver goes for the white-trash inflections right off, but her physical appearance alternates too rapidly between the ugly ex-con with a taste for the needle that she was, and the ravishing desperate housewife she’s becoming.

Wayne and Dahlia will do anything for their three children. That includes indulging their youngest son, Sam, in his penchant for girl’s clothing, a nice inside joke given Izzard’s infamous transvestite acts. While mom and the sibs each suffer yearnings to go back to their transient lifestyle, Wayne craves the domestic American Dream. His vision, and the familial impulse to do what’s best for your loved ones, keep the clan bonded even as nosy neighbors grow suspect, a prosthetic arm goes flying and Dale comes ever closer to discovering where to find them. Ultimately, the show operates on the same principle as “Weeds,” “The Sopranos” and “Six Feet Under.” Namely, extended families with quirky business practices are capable of loving and of being loved.
- April 11, 2007