Doug Rich absentmindedly hangs a handicapped-parking pass on his BMW’s rearview mirror as he pulls into a reserved parking place at the corporation where he serves as in-house counsel. It is a small symbol of the shortcuts and not-quite-legal status that make up his life.
In fact, Doug Rich isn’t handicapped. He can’t afford a BMW. He isn’t a lawyer. He isn’t even Doug Rich.
Everything about him is counterfeit, except his love of family and belief in the American Dream.
Doug is actually Wayne Malloy, a nomadic con artist from rural Louisiana who, with his wife and three kids, is on the run after stealing money from his clan’s extended-family bank.
In FX’s “The Riches,” debuting at 11 p.m. Monday, Wayne (Eddie Izzard) and his wife, Dahlia (Minnie Driver), are seasoned cons who talk their way into whatever they need.
When they witness an accident, they seize the chance to assume the identities of a deceased couple, Doug and Cherien Rich, and move into the Riches’ waiting McMansion in an affluent subdivision. There they study the couple’s bills, phone records and e-mail for clues to their world, and launch new suburban lives.
In time they realize that the hypocrisies and strained relationships required of them in their newly upper-middle-class lives are as bizarre as anything they’ve pulled off as petty thieving “Travellers,” the insular network of extended Southern families with a notorious reputation for grifting.
One of the toughest things to remember in their newfound station in life is that the local police are there not to arrest them but to protect them from the riffraff.
The Riches apply themselves diligently. Soon, they con their way into a private school as easily as they conned their way into a wedding reception. Moreover, the idea of private school and the sense of entitlement that goes with it become as important to them as lifting wallets and wedding presents once was.
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A stinging commentary on all-American upward mobility, “The Riches” is equal parts satirical humor and serious drama. As strong an indictment of upper-middle-class entitlement as HBO’s “The Sopranos,” this hour on FX is deserving of the comparison.
“The Riches” this week stakes out a new night for FX. Until now, the cable nework has offered dramas on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
Izzard and Driver are phenomenal: raw, scary and convincing in their roles as family-style grifters. Driver in particular is impressive as she morphs from an uneducated woman just released from prison with a heroin habit into an uneducated junkie pilfering pills from her neighbor in a gated community, learning how to navigate both the snazzy kitchen and the nosy, snooty neighborhood association president who demands they move their RV.
Driver, who scored an Oscar nomination for “Good Will Hunting” and had a recurring part on “Will & Grace,” makes Dahlia’s furtive and dangerous life choices seem reasonable in context. She brings Dahlia’s brutal background to vivid life, even while taking on the charming persona of Cherien.
Endearing and pathetic
Izzard (“My Super Ex-Girlfriend”), who won an Emmy in 1999 for his stand-up special “Dress to Kill,” is funny and endearing, when he’s not also pathetic, as Wayne/Doug.
The three kids – played by Shannon Woodward, Noel Fisher and Aidan Mitchell – hold up their end of the scripts. The cross-dressing youngest son (not unlike himself, Izzard said) represents a new direction for primetime.
Playwright Dmitry Lipkin created the series.
Clearly this is the best FX has offered since “The Shield,” a daring original work that speaks to class consciousness in America and the posturing that goes with it. “The Riches” is good enough to erase the memory of “Dirt,” the shallow, ill-conceived Courtney Cox drama that FX premiered in January.
As the Riches cannily steal the American dream, they are hunted by the clan of Travellers whose money they’ve taken. Their trailer-trash past threatens to catch up with their country-club present. As we’ve seen with Tony Soprano, it’s tough to avoid pulling for the imposters squatting in the million-dollar home with a pool.
Let’s hope any day of reckoning is several seasons away.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
