TV Feature: How Can We Explain Ozark's Enduring Success?

The era of the binge watch has been a blessing to students. In the very dim and distant past – “the ‘90s” the ancients did call it – college-goers with lectures to avoid and assignment deadlines to miss had to make do with children’s television, day-time soaps and whatever else happened to be going out on RTÉ One at 11am.

But those terrible days of getting through a hangover with Herculean infusions of Bear In The Big Blue House and Shortland Street are mercifully over. Thanks to streaming, students can idle away their precious youth watching things other than moth-eaten puppets and z-grade New Zealand actors.

Among the biggest streaming hits of the past 12 months – and one to which students have responded as enthusiastically as everyone else – is Jason Bateman’s Ozark, which now returns for a hugely-anticipated second run. As the title indicates, the setting is deepest Missouri – which, as portrayed here, is a twilight hinterland where bad people get up to bad things and nobody much cares.

Into this Southern Gothic setting enters Bateman’s Marty Byrde, an ethically flexible accountant who has fled south from Chicago, taking his family with him, after it emerges that his partner was short-changing a mob client. Once embedded in the town of Lake Ozark, he sets about establishing his own mini criminal empire, with the goal of paying back the crime bosses in Illinois to whom he owes his life (they agreed not to kill him on the understanding that he sets right his now very dead partner’s wrongs).

A mild-mannered everyman drawn into a world of criminal skulduggery sounds like a familiar pitch. As it should given that this, in broad strokes, is the trajectory of Breaking Bad – routinely heralded as the Greatest Television Show Ever. But if Breaking Bad was the apotheosis of the “difficult man” drama, it also seemed to draw a line under the genre. After a decade of shows about grumpy, obsessive… and yes, difficult males (The Sopranos, Mad Men etc etc), hadn’t we had enough of exploring masculinity in crisis? “Yes”, it was agreed.

So Ozark felt like a show at least five years behind the curve. TV had moved on – to blockbusters such as Game Of Thrones and smaller, smarter shows that turned tropes, such as that of the hell-bound dude-next-door, on their head (see the forthcoming lady-spy drama Killing Eve). Jason Bateman as a post-Walter White everybloke in Flyover America sounded like the worst idea ever.

Nonetheless, Ozark quickly found its audience. One reason was that this was not a series that mucked about. It took Breaking Bad three years to reach a point at which Walter White’s villainy was laid fully bare: Ozark got to the point in the first 30 minutes.

In a world in which we’re all too busy – students as much as anyone – Ozark didn’t want to waste your time. So it continues in season two, in which Marty and Wendy, their two unlikeable kids in tow, continue their no-good machinations, whilst giving the slip to the FBI and to local criminals including a redneck godfather portrayed by respected Scottish actor Peter Mullan.

Bateman, incidentally, could do with a hit. He was widely criticised for rushing to the defence of fellow Arrested Development cast member Jeffrey Tambor in a group interview to promote season five of the quirky comedy. In seeking to explain, if not quite defend, Tambor’s reputation for aggression, he reduced to tears fellow-cast member Jessica Walter, who had suffered the brunt of Tambor’s on set outbursts.

The backlash was immediate and intense, prompting Bateman to explain himself in a Twitter mea culpa. “Based on listening to the NYT interview and hearing people’s thoughts online I realise I was wrong here,” he wrote. “I’m incredibly embarrassed and deeply sorry to have done that to Jessica.” Several months later, Bateman has come through the furore with his reputation more or less unharmed. Speaking recently he revealed that he was flattered for the series to be compared to Breaking Bad, whilst noting there were clear differences.

“We feel fortunate at any time to hear that,” he said. “Obviously, Breaking Bad can never be touched. If we get halfway to their quality or longevity, we’ve done a lot. So, having said that, we’re not trying to replicate or emulate what they did narratively or aesthetically. “What they might be referring to is sort of this family you can relate to that’s going through a set of decisions that probably weren’t very smart. And how do they navigate the clash of those two worlds? And the plight of an ethically-challenged middle-aged white guy, kind of not making great calls at times.”

The Ozark region itself was a surrogate character on the series, he said – the desperation that hung in the air giving the drama a singular sense of menace. Certainly it’s very different from the desert glare of New Mexico-set Breaking Bad.

“We’re not trying to make an accurate documentary about the Ozarks,” said Bateman. “It just happens to be the place where [showrunner] Bill Dubuque wanted to have this thing set. This is a man who went there a lot when he was a kid, knew that it had a very colourful history, and leant itself to some of the kinds of characters that he would want to write about, and have those characters interface with some big city folks. And these big city folks wrongfully assuming that they could dominate them – and that they had them all figured out.”

Season two of Ozark is on Netflix now.