When a billionaire businessman dies in an explosion on a yacht, it is up to his new wife to figure out exactly what happened to him.
Georgina (Julia Stiles) is the wife of the super-rich Constantine Clios. When an explosion engulfs a yacht party that Constantine is attending, he dies and Georgina is widowed. It is in these dark times that she learns her husband’s riches were maintained through violence, deception and murder, and Georgina must do things she never thought she would in order to protect the family she married into little over a year before.
Riviera is the latest big budget show to be brought to us by Sky Atlantic, and it is also the latest show to not really deliver all that was promised. I’ve got to be honest and say that I’m not entirely sure how to feel about it. It started well, but then it dipped, only to pick up again with two episodes remaining. I guess I expected better from the channel because they show so much potential with all their promos.
One of the main things I struggled with was the fact that I didn’t really like any of the characters. To me, none of them were that interesting. One thing I had read about the show was that Georgina, played by Julia Styles, would undergo a Michael Corleone-esque transformation (no points for guessing why I decided to watch the show). There were times when I could see this, but it wasn’t until quite late on, and even then it didn’t seem to be that enduring. It felt more like they tried to make the character of Georgina like that, but it simply didn’t work for her. And because that character wasn’t very engaging, I struggled to connect with the performance from Stiles. Anyone could have played Georgina, and the same could be said for all the other main characters. There was simply no one who I’ll look back on and say, “You know what they were great in? Riviera.” In a sentence, the dull characters made for dull performances.
There also seemed to be some real pacing issues with this show. It started off brilliantly, and I think it was one of the best first episodes I’ve seen in a while. It really set the show up nicely with all the intrigue and the questions it raised. But then it never made use of much of what it set up in the first episode. The plot became very drawn out over the next handful of episodes before picking up again in the last two. This was a huge issue because there were ten episodes in all, so I watched about 7 weeks of nothing, but like an eejit I stuck with it because I thought the first episode was awesome and they would surely make use of the foundations at some point soon. I think one of biggest reasons it seemed to drag on so much was because it started on so many different possible strands and ended up losing itself (and me) along the way. Ultimately, the real problem was it didn’t really know what story to follow, so tried to tell multiple ones all at once.
All in all, Riviera wasn’t what I’d hoped it would be. Looking back now, there wasn’t much that I actually liked about it, and I’m not fussed whether it returns for a second season or not. I can’t say that I’d recommend the show because it just wasn’t nearly as good as it’d looked to be. The characters were the biggest downfall because they could’ve been its saving grace; however they were all so wooden, and as a result gave you nothing to cling on to. The bottom line is, there was potential here, but not for the first time with a film or TV show, it was wasted.
