At TV Scoop, we love it when Brits do well with foreign audiences. It gives us a warm glow (a bit like Ready Brek), though we selfishly, always want the chance to enjoy their impressive performances as well. If one of our own favourites is going to wow them Stateside, we want to get to watch the show at some point ourselves. And so, I’m thrilled to hear that The Riches is coming to the UK.
The Riches stars two Brits, namely beloved stand-up Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver, as Wayne and Dahlia Malloy – a couple, who with their children, have assumed the identities of a dead family to enjoy their wealth. Introducing themselves as the Rich family (victims of a car crash), the Malloys conspire to avoid detection as frauds, with their scandalous, money-grabbing exploits a hit in the US (mmm, funny that.) The show has already been picked up for a second season and Minnie’s performance has earned her an Emmy nomination.
Eddie happily defends his naughty alter-ego: “The Malloys are jackals, they are scavengers. They didn’t kill these people, it’s just an accident that happened. I’m sure other people would see this as morally ambiguous, but Wayne sees this as logical, something you’ve just got to do because it’s just sitting there. They’ve always lived life with that looking-over-the-shoulder thing going on. You’ve just really got to cover your tracks. But people get away with it. It kind of looks like surely someone’s going to find out, but strange stuff goes on all the time in real life. I don’t know if they can actually relax, but they can get away with it.”
With a successful career as a stand-up comedian and now a well-received foray into acting (he recently starred in the third Oceans movie), Eddie says that it all helps: “As a stand-up comedian, and as an actor, you have to lie for a living and that lends itself perfectly to being a con artist. You just have to get into that situation where you don’t really care about who you’re conning. The interesting thing about the Riches is we’re actually trying to take on people who are worth bringing down, as opposed to quite a lot of the grifting that goes on where they take on people who are vulnerable and shouldn’t be attacked.”
The Riches will be screened on Virgin 1, a new entertainment channel launching in the autumn.
[via The Sun]
