Riviera

They say the future of film production does not lie with the studios nor the massive film companies like Sony and Fox but with the networks. In the case of The Sopranos, Mad Men, the production values have produced ground-breaking television and Scandinavian noir has resulted in the The Killing and The Bridge. However there are also glitzy, slick formulaic series based on the super rich, sex and chicanery with an underlying message of unhappiness and Riviera, from the Sky Atlantic stable, comes within that category.

The idea is the brainchild of U2 manager Phil McGuinness whilst idling about in his Villa in Eze on the Riviera. With co executive director John Banville, who won the Man Booker Prize in 2005, and Neil Jordan whose most famous film is The Crying Game I was expecting something more. As for the cast, Julie Stiles, a versatile , talented actress who made her money and fame in the Bourne series, and Iwan Rheon of Game of Thrones took the lead roles as Georgina, the wife of Constantine Clios who was blown up on a Russian oligarch yacht, and his son respectively. I was rather hoping in a production where money was no object some more elderly character actor might get a part. Someone like Albert Finney in a cameo role. In fact the acting was as wooden as the script.

Adrian Lester as John Carver, an international art dealer, did not convince me at all. There was enough tension, mystery and pace to make me watch the second episode – the first ending with Georgina in a flat in Monte Carlo of her husband confronting somebody with a gun. Speaking to the Rusters, who go on their regular Nice pilgrimmage, and Michel de Vacri they all enjoyed the location shooting.

Michel said the Efrussi Rothschild villa, the home of Clios, was now making its third Riviera film appearance as it featured in To Catch a Thief and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, whilst Neil Rosen, who did not like it at all, possibly as it lacked a French film beauty, noted that the road on which Georgina was driving was the very same as Grace Kelly as the one on which she powered her sports car in To Catch A Thief.

The series was extensively and expensively marketed, an enormous amount of work and money must go into the trailers but this has the obvious consequence of alerting the viewer in advance. I hoped to be agreeably surprised and perhaps I will be in due course but for the moment it’s only the identity of the person in the Monte Carlo flat (could it be that her husband did not die?) that will persuade me to watch the next one.