The Riches - "Pilot" - 3/12/07
03-12-07 | 10:30 AM
#2
Senior Member
just a quick heads up for those may tivo/dvr this show -
my cable box shows this show as lasting 1 hr 17 minutes. maybe this is a mistake, but i set my dvr to record an extra 30 mins just in case.
my cable box shows this show as lasting 1 hr 17 minutes. maybe this is a mistake, but i set my dvr to record an extra 30 mins just in case.
03-12-07 | 01:57 PM
#5
Moderator
The promos I've seen for this are quite good. I did a double take when I realized that was Izzard talking. I'm going to give it a shot, I hope it's better than Dirt.
03-12-07 | 02:24 PM
#7
DVD Talk Hero
Originally Posted by Geofferson
Any buzz on this show? I've heard virtually nothing.
03-12-07 | 02:57 PM
#8
DVD Talk Limited Edition
FX certainly hasn't been pushing this show as hard as they shoved DIRT at us. I was sick of the "this time you've gone too far" song before that show even premiered.
03-12-07 | 02:59 PM
#10
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
I am a huge Izzard fan, so I'm so ready to see this one. Really keeping my fingers crossed that this one will be really good. I'd love for Izzard to get a really good TV show.
03-12-07 | 06:24 PM
#12
DVD Talk Legend
Here are some excerpts from the NY Times review (one of several good ones that have appeared in NYC papers):
So much research is devoted to studying whether violence on television desensitizes children. Yet nobody seems to worry that adults are becoming inured to excellence.
"The Riches," a new series that begins tonight on FX, could serve as the control in a much-needed experiment. It's so compelling it deserves to be a hit, generating as much media attention and Internet chatter as "Deadwood," "Nip/Tuck" or "24." (It would be blasphemy to invoke "The Sopranos," since no show is that good, not even "The Sopranos.")
So if "The Riches" does poorly, then it can only mean that there is too much high-quality television driving away the bad.
Some of the danger signs include the ho-hum, seen-it-before syndrome. A synopsis of "The Riches" -- a family of Southern grifters con their way into a wealthy gated community -- sounds vaguely familiar. Some might shrug it off as a cross between "Weeds," the Showtime series about a pot-dealing soccer mom and an R-rated "Beverly Hillbillies." It's not the first cable drama centered on an endearing career criminal and his family.
But "The Riches" has a voice and peculiar style all its own, the comedy always offset by a lurking sense of sadness and menace. The Malloys are Travelers, Gypsy-like nomads who in the United States, most often in the South, live in tight, hierarchical communities. Many survive on thievery and petty scams. After a dispute with the would-be head of their clan, the Malloys steal the community bank and run away.
More through bad luck than serendipity, they assume the identity of a dead couple, Doug and Cherien Rich, and masquerade as a lawyer and a homemaker with three children in private school.
The father, Wayne Malloy, is played by Eddie Izzard, a beloved stand-up comedian and sketch artist in Britain. Minnie Driver plays his wife, Dahlia, a princess of the blood in the realm of the Travelers but in the outside world a woman who has just emerged from a two-year stint in jail with an addiction to cough syrup.
Together, they are superb in "The Riches," a couple alternately loving and alienated, winning and disturbing, artful and doomed.
Trading in their battered RV and Louisiana swamplands for a sumptuous pink mansionette with swimming pool, the Malloys pull off their ruse with skill and also childish naïveté. The children do not go to school but are well educated in the arts of forgery, car theft and flimflam. "Buffer" is the Travelers' term for civilians, and the Malloys are at first bewildered by and slightly contemptuous of buffer luxuries like the garbage disposal and flat-screen TV.
Slowly the lure of affluence and ease pulls them in. "This American dream, they don't just give it to you with a big old ribbon and a bow," Dahlia scolds her husband. "If we want it, we have take it, do whatever it takes to hold on to it till they rip it out of our cold dead hands."
"The Riches" is that rare thing, a dark, sophisticated series that speaks to our most childlike natures. Just as little boys and girls dress up as the Little Mermaid or pretend they are enrolled at Hogwarts, the Malloys tempt even stand-up adults to assume a new identity and live it to the fullest -- on someone else's MasterCard.
Really looking forward to this .....
So much research is devoted to studying whether violence on television desensitizes children. Yet nobody seems to worry that adults are becoming inured to excellence.
"The Riches," a new series that begins tonight on FX, could serve as the control in a much-needed experiment. It's so compelling it deserves to be a hit, generating as much media attention and Internet chatter as "Deadwood," "Nip/Tuck" or "24." (It would be blasphemy to invoke "The Sopranos," since no show is that good, not even "The Sopranos.")
So if "The Riches" does poorly, then it can only mean that there is too much high-quality television driving away the bad.
Some of the danger signs include the ho-hum, seen-it-before syndrome. A synopsis of "The Riches" -- a family of Southern grifters con their way into a wealthy gated community -- sounds vaguely familiar. Some might shrug it off as a cross between "Weeds," the Showtime series about a pot-dealing soccer mom and an R-rated "Beverly Hillbillies." It's not the first cable drama centered on an endearing career criminal and his family.
But "The Riches" has a voice and peculiar style all its own, the comedy always offset by a lurking sense of sadness and menace. The Malloys are Travelers, Gypsy-like nomads who in the United States, most often in the South, live in tight, hierarchical communities. Many survive on thievery and petty scams. After a dispute with the would-be head of their clan, the Malloys steal the community bank and run away.
More through bad luck than serendipity, they assume the identity of a dead couple, Doug and Cherien Rich, and masquerade as a lawyer and a homemaker with three children in private school.
The father, Wayne Malloy, is played by Eddie Izzard, a beloved stand-up comedian and sketch artist in Britain. Minnie Driver plays his wife, Dahlia, a princess of the blood in the realm of the Travelers but in the outside world a woman who has just emerged from a two-year stint in jail with an addiction to cough syrup.
Together, they are superb in "The Riches," a couple alternately loving and alienated, winning and disturbing, artful and doomed.
Trading in their battered RV and Louisiana swamplands for a sumptuous pink mansionette with swimming pool, the Malloys pull off their ruse with skill and also childish naïveté. The children do not go to school but are well educated in the arts of forgery, car theft and flimflam. "Buffer" is the Travelers' term for civilians, and the Malloys are at first bewildered by and slightly contemptuous of buffer luxuries like the garbage disposal and flat-screen TV.
Slowly the lure of affluence and ease pulls them in. "This American dream, they don't just give it to you with a big old ribbon and a bow," Dahlia scolds her husband. "If we want it, we have take it, do whatever it takes to hold on to it till they rip it out of our cold dead hands."
"The Riches" is that rare thing, a dark, sophisticated series that speaks to our most childlike natures. Just as little boys and girls dress up as the Little Mermaid or pretend they are enrolled at Hogwarts, the Malloys tempt even stand-up adults to assume a new identity and live it to the fullest -- on someone else's MasterCard.
Really looking forward to this .....
Last edited by marty888; 03-12-07 at 06:29 PM.
03-12-07 | 06:34 PM
#13
DVD Talk Legend
I have seen a lot of ads for this. Most have been during dirt that I notice when I am zooming through the commercials. I think it looks great. FX seems to have a lot of quality shows.
03-12-07 | 06:59 PM
#15
DVD Talk Special Edition
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From: United States of HELL YEAH!!!
03-12-07 | 11:21 PM
#16
Thread Starter
DVD Talk Hero
It seems to have borrowed a lot from Big Love. You have the family trying to hide their secret and the hillbillyish relatives they're trying to not have anything to do with.
Izzard was good and it has potential.
"Chromosomal retard"
Izzard was good and it has potential.
"Chromosomal retard"
03-13-07 | 12:58 AM
#19
DVD Talk Hero
This show was fine and all, but I have a nit to pick.
Have TV/movie writers ever been to a high school reunion?
Because, in real life, they are NEVER in the high school gym, and are usually at a hotel or banquet hall. Also, tickets for reunions usually run from about $75 to $200, and if you haven't paid and have your ticket, you're shit-out-of-luck, and aint getting in.
Anyways, besides that, the show was fine - good acting, and Gomez!
Have TV/movie writers ever been to a high school reunion?
Because, in real life, they are NEVER in the high school gym, and are usually at a hotel or banquet hall. Also, tickets for reunions usually run from about $75 to $200, and if you haven't paid and have your ticket, you're shit-out-of-luck, and aint getting in.
Anyways, besides that, the show was fine - good acting, and Gomez!
03-13-07 | 05:34 AM
#20
DVD Talk Legend
Originally Posted by slop101
This show was fine and all, but I have a nit to pick.
Have TV/movie writers ever been to a high school reunion?
Because, in real life, they are NEVER in the high school gym, and are usually at a hotel or banquet hall. Also, tickets for reunions usually run from about $75 to $200, and if you haven't paid and have your ticket, you're shit-out-of-luck, and aint getting in.
Anyways, besides that, the show was fine - good acting, and Gomez!
Have TV/movie writers ever been to a high school reunion?
Because, in real life, they are NEVER in the high school gym, and are usually at a hotel or banquet hall. Also, tickets for reunions usually run from about $75 to $200, and if you haven't paid and have your ticket, you're shit-out-of-luck, and aint getting in.
Anyways, besides that, the show was fine - good acting, and Gomez!
03-13-07 | 10:57 AM
#23
DVD Talk Legend
I liked it. I just wonder where the family and friends of the real Riches are. It seems strange they would be able to pull this off so easy.
03-13-07 | 11:50 AM
#24
Originally Posted by wildman1037
Forgot about this show. Need to download it from someone. Thank God for ReplayTV!! 
I haven't watched my recording yet, but Minnie Driver was on the View yesterday and mentioned the show becomes more humorous as the episodes proceed.
03-13-07 | 08:25 PM
#25
Thread Starter
DVD Talk Hero
Looks like it did well last night
FX's The Riches debuted as the network's second highest rated series premiere ever with 2.5 million viewers 18-49 at 10 p.m. and 3.8 million total viewers.
The quirky drama's premiere drew more viewers than those of FX's Rescue Me, Dirt and Over There, finishing second only to The Shield's premiere in the 18-49 demo. It also way outperformed FX's primetime average - 678,000 viewers 18-49 in February.
The show, about a family of drifters who assumes the identity of a wealthy suburban clan, debuted at 10 p.m. after the network's premiere of The Day After Tomorrow and built significantly on its lead-in (the movie drew 1.7 million adults 18-49 and 3.1 million total viewers).
This was FX's first Monday night premiere of an original series and the show more than doubled the network's best-ever 10 p.m. Monday delivery.
FX encored The Riches at 11 p.m. to 800,000 new adults 18-49 and 1.4 million total viewers. The gender split for the show's premiere was 48% female, 52% male, on par with that of Rescue Me.
The quirky drama's premiere drew more viewers than those of FX's Rescue Me, Dirt and Over There, finishing second only to The Shield's premiere in the 18-49 demo. It also way outperformed FX's primetime average - 678,000 viewers 18-49 in February.
The show, about a family of drifters who assumes the identity of a wealthy suburban clan, debuted at 10 p.m. after the network's premiere of The Day After Tomorrow and built significantly on its lead-in (the movie drew 1.7 million adults 18-49 and 3.1 million total viewers).
This was FX's first Monday night premiere of an original series and the show more than doubled the network's best-ever 10 p.m. Monday delivery.
FX encored The Riches at 11 p.m. to 800,000 new adults 18-49 and 1.4 million total viewers. The gender split for the show's premiere was 48% female, 52% male, on par with that of Rescue Me.