Billions review: An entertaining, unfussy show that dared to differ from 'Succession'

Billions, the seventh and final season dropped on Disney+ Hotstar.

“You know the only enemy worse than one with all the resources, is one that has nothing to lose,” Chuck growled at Axel, in the finale of Billions’ breakthrough first season. This idea of desperation born out of an appetite for risk, has given a despairingly familiar TV Show, the longevity that few would have expected from it. On the surface, Billions has always been about dirty Wall Street money and the tricks, men on both sides of its precarious line of judgment, pull to rig the game. “What have I really done, besides earn money, and succeed,” Axel implored in a first season that though it began suggestively, thankfully detoured from aping the wolves to stick to the cats and the mice. Instead, Billions though silly in its wrinkled approach to arriving at a moment of significance, became much more than a heady battle between two titanic egos. In its seventh and last season, it sees the return of Axel, as maybe the only man who can bell an unyielding wall street cat. It’s not like the old days, but it does remind you of them.

Damian Lewis returns to the role of the dubiously named Bobby Axelrod, the sagacious hedge fund owner that Chuck Rhoades, played by the terrific Paul Giamatti, pursued to nefarious ends for five barnstorming seasons. Despite hour-long episodes, the show’s writers have always projected the show as a twisty, nail-biting bout between two white men who quite simply don’t know how to pull a punch. Much of the show’s heteronormative language, and machoism, and racial profile is billed as a critique of Wall Street culture. Sure there are plush penthouses, luxury cars and sex dungeons, but Billions never quite plunged itself into the extremes of privilege, as if it were the cashing the last cheque it would ever see. Instead, it remained an intimate, often fascinating battle between two increasingly uncertain ideas of righteousness.

Contrary to the age in which the show played out — the Trump years for one — it doesn’t exactly sniff and bite into the very idea of elite delusion. Instead, it’s a show fairly comfortable with the idea of money being a potent source of culture and catharsis. The depravity, is merely a mask for everything that cannot be pushed into the bracket of black or white. Money, it turns out, merely travels from grey pockets to ever-more greying pockets. The nature of morality here, is a whim. But that doesn’t stop men like Chuck and his ilk from believing in it, chasing it with draining motivation. Part of the charm about the show’s clash-of-ideologies tapestry, was the obvious fact that other than spout their idealism or write it on the back of a note, there was little that both Chuck and Axel were doing about it in person. It didn’t make them broody — though Chuck comes close — but it also didn’t usher them into a bottomless spiral from where only decadence seemed salvageable. Throughout the show, in fact, Chuck and Axel have remained restrained, men of measurable grace, who indulge the odd habit or two. Chuck’s sexual fantasies are a cue to the profanity he accepts, in order to be devout in at least one of his life’s purposes.

The writing in Billions, its gastronomic origin in pop-culture and its ability to fly off of the chin without ever denting the chest, never quite elevated it to the writhing broodiness of a Succession, but it is as entertaining as watching rich people ever gets. In fact, Billions has always carried this perky energy, this air of the gut in free fall, that merge the designs of prestige television and with the mannerisms of something lathery. It’s second season finale, with that switch between Chuck’s exasperation and exaltation is perched on that fine line between melodrama and finesse. It’s precisely the kind of chiselled, but also misshapen performance that the show’s wide cast, especially its two brilliant leads managed to pull off. To Lewis and Giamatti’s warring sides, you can also add the excellent performances of Maggie Siff (Chuck’s wife), as the living-walking embodiment of a catch-22 situation, and David Costabile (Axel’s right-hand man), as the man who read adulterated limericks from a biblical source we’d all like to get our hands on. It wasn’t quite as delirious as Scorsese’s imagination, nor as decrepit and maybe precious, as Succession’s ruinous vision of wealth. It was thankfully its own thing, and despite being shadowed by a more illustrious series, drove in its own lane.

Back stabbings, intimate betrayals, scandalous secrets and questionable kinks are all hallmarks of a show that believes excess, is the only route to analyse the spill-over that happens from money into morality. In Billions, these hallmarks were ever-present, but not as admonishments of the protagonists. Neither did they, more importantly, dwell on cultural tiffs as incisive commentary about American, and maybe global wealth. Billions instead occupied that neat, pulpy and maybe inconsequential ground beyond the presumptive clarity. The kind of place where small-talk about money, or as Axel called it, ‘fuck you money’ and the godawful things it could afford felt exhilarating. Watching it being spied, suspended or burned down, maybe even more so. Each so irresistibly worthy on their day. It is what money is after all — an infection that can also seem like its own cure.

Billions Season 7 is now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar