REVIEW: 'Black Monday'
Just like the industry it depicts, this Wall Street–set comedy is hectic. Opening with scenes of the 1987 stock market crash the series gets its name from, Black Monday then jumps back a year to count down to the financial disaster with the promise of showing what really happened. Watch the trailer below.
All we know at the outset is that it has to do with the relationship between unconventional trader Maurice “Mo” Monroe (Don Cheadle) and the MBA graduate, Blair Pfaff (Andrew Rannells), he tricks into working for him. Fast-talking, profanity-spouting, risk-taking Mo seems only to have one setting – full tilt – while Blair prefers to do things by the textbook.
But their odd-couple dynamic, the theoretical centre of the series, is swamped by a constant tsunami of inappropriate gags and fever-pitch monologues by Mo. “Wall Street is not the roller-coaster, you are,” colleague Dawn (Regina Hall) tells him at one point. We have the motion sickness to prove it. (Episode 1 on Stan now. Season continues on Mon., Jan. 28) 2 stars
