The real mystery of Riviera: who actually watches it?
The new series of Sky Atlantic’s sumptuous stinker Riviera begins with not one but two hoary old TV drama tropes. First comes a disturbing sequence that turns out to be – surprise! – just a dream. Ever since Bobby Ewing’s infamous 1986 shower in Dallas, dream revelations have been shorthand for a dearth of ideas.
This cuts straight to another teasing scene involving priceless stolen jewels, a mystery man and a gun – before hopping back in time to explain how we got here, complete with a caption informing us: “Three months earlier…” It’s like there was a two-for-one multi-buy offer at Clichés ‘R’ Us discount screenwriting warehouse.
Frankly, I was surprised to see Riviera return to our screens at all. As one viewer put it this week on Twitter: “Just seen Riviera season 3 advertised. How did it get past season 1? It was absolute garbage.”
That viewer wasn’t me, but it might well have been. I don’t know a single person who watches Riviera, let alone one who actually rates it. Yet apparently there are enough of them to ensure this style-over-substance guff keeps getting recommissioned. I’m beginning to suspect that Riviera will still be going when we’re all long dead.
In a broadcasting landscape where far superior shows with devoted followings – from Giri/Haji to GLOW, from Harlots to Homeland, from Ray Donovan to BoJack Horseman, to name a few recent examples – have been cruelly canned, the continued existence of the execrable Riviera is especially galling. And not least because it’s eye-wateringly, wallet-emptyingly expensive to make.
The opening episode of the new series alone hops between London, Venice, St Tropez and Buenos Aires. Everyone travels by speedboat or superyacht, private jet or helicopter. Every property is enviable, every pool an infinity stunner, every hotel suite straight out of a Sunday supplement. They guzzle champagne like it’s tap water but rarely eat, presumably because it’s vulgar. Or possibly because they can’t intone the awful dialogue with their mouths full.
Leading lady-cum-clothes horse Julia Stiles strides around sporting an array of designer maxi-dresses – always flawlessly accessorised with statement heels, sunglasses and handbags upon which the camera can’t help lingering, like a glossy advertisement.
As the third series sashays into view, dripping in bling and plotted by numbers, a year has elapsed since the explosive climax of series two, which saw American art curator Georgina Clios (Stiles) burn down her own gallery. As you do.
She has abandoned the cursed Côte d’Azur, where her billionaire banker husband was murdered and all manner of moneyed misfortunes befell her, to start a new career as an art restitution lecturer in London. Pre-lockdown, obviously. A face mask and bottle of hand sanitiser would ruin the cut of her haute couture.
However, lecturing isn’t terribly telegenic (despite all those Powerpoint decks and Moleskine notebooks) so our heroine is soon tottering her way across Europe on the hunt for a Nazi-looted Picasso. En route, she encounters Riviera’s familiar rogue’s gallery of corrupt art dealers, shady politicians, gentlemen thieves, trigger-happy hitmen and sulky bad boys trying to prove themselves to their fathers.
It’s supposed to be about glamour and danger, power and passion, steamy sex and super-wealth. From its neo-noir title sequence, melodramatically soundtracked by Florence & The Machine’s Isabella Summers, Riviera has pretensions to be James Bond with a Frieze subscription. Sadly, it has all the sizzling excitement of a wet weekend in Skegness, gazing despairingly at a tattered Monet poster Blu-Tacked to a caravan wall.
Action sequences are unoriginal and thrill-free. Foot chases are invariably interrupted by Georgina having to bend down and take off her shoes. The script is pedestrian and prosaically functional. Hollywood alumna Stiles is a strangely blank presence at its centre – a sort of sullen charisma vortex in a swishy frock.
For the new series, she’s joined by Britain’s own Rupert Graves, who’s on autopilot as a sort of crumpled, Hugh Grant-type cad called Gabriel Hirsch – a noted art expert who likes a drink, has an eye for “the ladies” and, naturally, isn’t all he seems. Rupes is better than this rubbish and he knows it.
We’re also “blessed” by the return of the spoilt, insufferable aristocratic Eltham twins from last series. Both happen to be played by scions of celebrity dynasties – namely Poppy Delevingne (the socialite and elder sister of model Cara) and Jack Fox (younger brother of controversy magnet Laurence). I’m sure they carved out their careers through hard graft and sheer talent.
Glowing reviews of Riviera are hard to find. One broadsheet critic (again, not me but it might well have been) said: “You could almost write ‘So bad it’s good’, but not quite, because it’s mostly just bad." Another added: ”Riviera might be flashy but it’s shallow, vulgar and boring.”
In the absence of critical buzz, Riviera makes shrewd use of social media instead. A raft of influencers were paid to plug the last series. Ahead of this third run, NOW TV have been sending Riviera-branded crates of wine to journalists in the hope of approving coverage, or at least a thank-you tweet. Well, hacks do tend to enjoy a tipple. Maybe the marketing team hope they’ll get too blind-drunk to see the screen properly.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, considering how ropey it is, but Riviera’s production was troubled right from the start. The series was created and co-written by Irish film-maker Neil Jordan, the Oscar-winning director behind The Crying Game and Interview With a Vampire.
It was “based on an idea” by, bizarrely, U2 manager Paul McGuinness, who reportedly wrote the show’s “list of ingredients”: "Rich people behaving badly in the sun, yachts, Maseratis, great clothes, beautiful women, art fraud, money laundering through the auction houses, murder, adultery.”
From this recipe, a soggy-bottomed Euro-pudding was made. Jordan disowned Riviera as soon as the first episode aired, due to his scripts being reworked by others. “They were changed, to my huge surprise and considerable upset,” he said. “There were various sexual scenes introduced and a lot of very expository dialogue. I objected in the strongest terms possible.”
Jordan says he took a "back seat" from the production as Riviera shifted from his darker premise to something akin to an Eighties soap. “It was described as ‘Dynasty Sur Mer’,” he said. “It was quite distressing, the way it proceeded. I can't claim it's mine. If I had been in control of the thing, it would have been quite different.”
Meanwhile, the uncredited star of the debut series – the Clios family’s lavish Tuscan-style estate, where the verdant gardens and gleaming furniture out-acted most of the cast – was torn down following a bitter property dispute. After years of complaints from neighbours, a French court ruled that Chateau Diter, a £49m mansion nestled in the countryside between Nice and Cannes, was built illegally. Oops.
Despite its difficult birth and questionable quality, Riviera somehow proved a ratings hit. When it launched in summer 2017, Sky trumpeted Riviera as its most successful original drama (although it has since been overtaken by Gangs of London and Chernobyl). It drew an audience of 2.3m per episode and more than 20m downloads in total. Those figures dipped for last year’s follow-up series, but it’s still a big enough hit to keep it viable.
Who are these elusive viewers? What can they possibly enjoy about this expensive but soulless enterprise? Is it all another dream, like Bobby Ewing lathering up in the Southfork Ranch showers?
It’s yet another mystery surrounding this strangely charmless series. Just like with the grasping, gaudy billionaires it portrays, there’s no accounting for taste.
Riviera returns to Sky Atlantic at 9pm tonight. All episodes will be available as a Sky Box Set or on NOW TV
