McMafia, episode four: Family means everything, so what's next for Alex and the Godmans?
Alex got busted by fiancé Rebecca and it was the day of reckoning in Mumbai. As the series reached its midway point, here’s all the talking points from McMafia's eventful episode four…
The god of Mumbai is no more
It was Breaking Bad, Bollywood-style. After the tip-off from the mysterious Mexican shipping tycoon Antonio Mendez (Caio Blat) in episode three, ambitious young pretender Dilly Mahmood (a raw, swaggering turn from Nawazuddin Siddiqui) was ready to steal a one-tonne drug shipment from under the nose of reigning Indian godfather Benny Chopra (Atul Kale).
We watched the heroin get slid through pipes to bypass the barbed wire fences along the Pakistan border, then get welded into washing machines for transporting. A dirty business indeed. It’d take more than a boil wash to get those moral stains out.
With the help of a nocturnal raid on Benny’s office, his hapless late-working accountant (coldly shot in the head for his trouble) and terrifyingly talented hacker Jay “Jammy” Chohan (Vishwas Kini), Dilly gleaned all the info he needed to pull off an audacious heist. It was knuckle-gnawingly tense as cargo containers were intercepted and fake security passes checked, but he pulled it off and the fateful Srikkanth Steel container was last seen driving off into the Mumbai night.
I found myself rooting for Dilly, despite his mercurial moods that turned on a rupee – quick to slap (or shoot) those who displeased him. The final scene saw some enterprising young urchins take Dilly to Chopra’s corpse, dumped and undignified on a rubbish tip – presumably executed by silently seething Russian mob boss Vadim Kalyagin (Merab Ninidze) for bungling the operation.
“Who’s god now?” snarled Dilly, respectfully closing the dead man’s eyes – before spitting on his corpse and striding off to seize control of his new criminal empire. It was a changing of the gangland guard.
Kleiman put it on Alex’s conscience
Puppet-master politician Semiyon Kleiman (David Strathairn) ensured it was hedge fund manager Alex Godman (James Norton) who gave the heroin heist the go-ahead. After all, the intel had come from his source, he’d transferred the necessary funds and even found the crucial computer hacker.
This seems to be the manipulative strategy of choice in McMafia world. Kleiman had made Alex responsible for Reznik’s death in Prague two episodes ago and now we saw Dilly do likewise with the unlucky accountant.
When Alex gave the nod – a cryptic “Let me know how it goes” down the phone – he crossed a line. He wasn’t just sitting behind a keyboard anymore. His soft banker’s hands had blood on them and it wouldn’t come off in the shower – even if that scene did fulfil the Norton flesh quota for this episode.
Heroic hackers ran the show
How very 21st century. It was two computer hackers who became the key cogs in the global crime machine.
When Godman Capital’s “heavy metal IT guy” Tobe Miller (Joshua James) was mentioned in passing in episode three, we suspected he’d have a bigger role to play. And so it proved. With suspicious sidekick Karin (Kemi-Bo Jacobs) sniffing around his shady global fund, Alex rehired Tobe on a freelance basis to cover his electronic trail.
We enjoyed Alex and Tobe’s wary stand-off becoming a budding friendship. “Fortunately for you, I know as much about financial fraud as you do about cyber-security,” said the sarky IT nerd, shyly avoiding eye contact and sporting a T-shirt by real-life Indonesian hardcore band Burgerkill.
The pair then bickered amusingly over who worked harder, had more friends and the most fun, before Tobe shrugged: “Trust me, in this world, you’re an innocent.” I wouldn’t be so sure anymore.
It was Tobe who recommended chatroom buddy Jammy as the best hacker in India. Dilly soon barged into his Bangalore home for some of his unique brand of persuasion – sweetened by a cricket bat signed by Indian superstar Virat Kohli for Jammy’s cricket-mad son. (A neat echo of this came later, when the slumdogs pointed out Chopra’s cadaver with an altogether scruffier bat.)
Jammy duly did Dilly’s bidding by hacking into a circuitous chain of restaurant booking systems, email inboxes, chocolate vending machines and, ultimately, the wi-fi network at Mumbai Port Authority. “It’s like Pac-Man,” said Dilly with grudging admiration. But will it soon be game over?
Is Rebecca and Alex’s relationship doomed?
Back in London, Karin found that Alex’s new fund wasn’t just password-protected but he was running it solo, with no reports filed to colleagues. Meanwhile, fiancé Rebecca Harper (Juliet Rylance) found his secret second phone.
The two women met up to discuss their worries at the historic and aptly-named Hung, Drawn & Quartered pub in Tower Hill (half a Guinness for Rebecca – a hint that she’s about to fall pregnant, possibly?). Rebecca’s discovery that Alex had also been checking the weather in the Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Dubai, Tel Aviv and Geneva confirmed her suspicions and she confronted Alex.
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“I invest in emerging markets,” he explained. “I work in these places and so do you.” “But I don’t visit tax havens and offshore sinkholes to launder some corrupt politician’s dirty money,” she retorted, as all her speeches about ethical capitalism came back to bite him.
His insistence that “You’re all I care about” followed episode three’s assertion: “Without you, I have no idea who I am.” For Alex, his relationship with Rebecca maintains his delusion that he’s still got “moral integrity” and is “doing things the right way, without my family’s involvement”. If he loses Rebecca, he might well lose his remaining moral compass too.
He came clean – well, partially – and promised to pull out, now that his business is back on its feet. Yet surely he’s in far too deep to escape now? And has all trust gone between the golden couple?
Prague problems led Vadim to rumble Kleiman
Determined to get his counterfeiting operation back on-track in the Czech capital, Vadim coldly shrugged off the murder in episode three (“A cop? He was a thief, stealing my goods”) and put new nemesis Karel Benes (Karel Roden) under surveillance.
The ex-policeman was too careful, so this proved unfruitful – but FSB insider Ilya Fedorov (Kirill Pirogov) found a way. He had drugs planted on Benes’ wildchild daughter, hacked her phone and piggybacked onto her father’s.
The call log soon revealed that it was Kleiman who was backing Benes’ sabotage of Vadim’s business and that they met in Prague shortly before Reznik “fell” from his apartment balcony. Crucially, Vadim also learnt that Kleiman had “an assistant” with him.
Remember Mendez admonishing Alex for lax security after travelling under his own passport? As Kleiman had warned his new protégé: “It won’t be long until Vadim traces it back to you and me.” The Russians could be coming, like they did for Uncle Boris (David Dencik).
Our hero’s family is falling apart
Since his infidelity was exposed in episode three, Dmitri (Aleksey Serebryakov, who also plays the titular medic in the Russian remake of House MD, fact fans) has been well and truly in the doghouse. Wife Oksana (Maria Shukshina) refused to chink her husband’s glass during the most awkward engagement drinks ever, and later told him: “You and the children are my whole life. You have spat on my soul.” Dmitri was on his knees begging for forgiveness. None was forthcoming.
We’re concerned about Alex’s sister Katya (Faye Marsay) too. She kicked off about the quality of her father’s champagne – cava, how ghastly – before the sound of breaking glass as she rowed with long-suffering boyfriend Femi (Clifford Samuel). Katya also seems to increasingly have the cocaine sniffles.
McMafia grid
With all this talk of family being everything – by both Oksana and Alex – could Katya be the way his enemies get to Alex? The business end of the series promises to be explosive.
