I first encountered this show by accident and frustration. I was watching the Fargo TV show in the Dominican Republic, watched 10 episodes of season 1 and expected to be able to continue watching the rest of season 1 while in NYC only to discover that it is not available in NYC's Netflix. I dunno what the hell is going on there but it makes me mad. Anyway, that is how I discovered Ozark
I really like Jason Bateman and that is the big reason I decided to start watching this. I seem to also remember a friend of mine recommending it. We don't really get exposed to this stuff in Thailand the way that people do in the west so normally we are a bit late in figuring these things out. For example, I don't even know anyone that has Netflix in Thailand, a year ago the service was banned and blocked by ISP's. So there's that.
The story behind Ozark is that Marty Byrd (Bateman) is a successful financial planner that it is quickly and a bit shokingly revealed also dabbled in money laundering (not a spoiler as it is revealed early in EP 1.) For me anyway, this is a bit of a shock because up to that point he was presented as being frugal and very cautious with expenditures - perhaps even stingy as he denies his daughter $10 for something and he also drives a Toyota Celica despite his large salary (it's a good car, don't get me wrong... but certainly not a millionaire's ride.)
To keep things moving I'll get to the point. Some S**T goes down and some associates meet untimely deaths and he bargains for his life by agreeing to move to the Ozarks to launder even more money for the Mexican Cartel in the Ozarks.
Reasons why this show is good: They don't waste a bunch of time in character background or introduction and so far the action and progression of the plot is pretty rapid. Some might argue that the story moves a bit too fast as here I am and I can't remember very many of the people's names in the show. Jason Bateman is incredible as expected, and the supporting cast of his family are done wonderfully (including Laura Linney - who is one of my fav's.) So far the only characters that I think are acted any less than perfectly would be some of the Langmores, which are a hillbilly crime family that already live in this area.
I was familiar with the name Ozark but despite the fact that my family is from near that part of the world, i have never been there as far as I know. It looks beautiful. It is a shame that we never went. Maybe Missouri is larger than I think and it actually is not close at all - no one knows because no one goes there.
The trailer does a very good job of showing the intensity of the show. The show itself does a magnificent job of making you stay up too late because each episode (of course) ends on a cliffhanger that demands you have to watch the next one.
I am only a few episodes in and things are moving along nicely and so far I can highly recommend this series to anyone out there. You may recall that my opinions of The Haunting of Hill House started out in the same fashion only to be destroyed by poor writing and a weak script after about 5 episodes in. Let's hope that doesn't happen here.
## *impression so far*
# 9 / 10