| Created 007.11.16; Updated 2007.11.16 |
This article originally appeared in British Weekly. Photos copyright BBC America.
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Goldplated's New Money Can't Pay the Rent SANTA MONICA, CA (British Weekly) 11/21/07 — As a wealthy Cheshire real estate developer, David Schofield runs over the people who get in his way. Literally. He tries to drive a backhoe over a squatter blocking construction at his new subdivision. Did gold-digger blonde mistress Kelly Harrison have this new money real estate developer's baby by mistake? Or, was it on purpose as a calculated move to push out his current wife? Harrison certainly got her figure back quickly. More... |
Cheshire real estate developer unhappy despite having everything.
Even without a beautiful baby, what man wouldn't choose perky knock-out Harrison over abusive burn-out alcoholic wife Barbara Marten? And, why would anyone blame him? Marten plays a disgusting drooling creature who likes to drink and drive, but not in a car. Her drunk driving is on the golf course. What woman goes out to play golf when she's falling down drunk?
The gold-digger tells friends she really loves her man. Despite their rude skepticism, she seems to really mean it. The gold-digger is a quite a catch, actually. She's beautiful. She's thoughtful. She's responsible. She's tender. She doesn't cheat on her man. And she doesn't do drugs, which is more than can be said for two of the developer's grown children, played by Nicholas Shaw and Jaime Winstone. Shaw is disturbingly close to his mother. He likes a little horseplay with her naked in the shower. Winstone is a spoiled rich shoplifter who likes to snort a line of cocaine with her brother using the table next to the baby's crib. When the gold-digger catches them endangering her baby, she accepts the brother's lame excuse that they spilled the baby's talcum powder. She could have asked, "Since when do you two snort talcum powder?"
The eldest son, played by Darren Tighe, is a cog in his father's business, standing around the construction site uselessly when work needs to get done. The steady but not ready eldest son is abused with accusations of greed when he asks his father to make him a partner in return for mortgaging his house to bail out his bankrupt dad. Dad indignantly turns down this reasonable offer. Maybe the son's socialite wife, played by Poppy Miller, should be in charge? She's the one who wears the pants in the eldest son's household.
Successful shows about greedy villains, like The Sopranos or The Shield, present an anti-hero who has serious flaws, but with a sense of honor and loyalty that binds him to friends and family. The perpetually scowling real estate developer in Goldplated has no moral compass and makes no surprising choices. The premise of Goldplated, that these are all superficial people only out for themselves, results in a cold humorless drama with nothing interesting to resolve.
Two episodes of Goldplated air weekly on BBC America at on
Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Premieres November 28.