If you’ve got a fetish for the obscenely wealthy and all the horrible things they do, we have some excellent news for you: season seven of the wildly popular Billions arrives in New Zealand on August 13. Check here for your provider closer to the release date.
If you’ve never checked out Showtime’s longest-running drama, here’s the gist: billionaire hedge fund manager Robert “Bobby” Axelrod (Damian Lewis) presents as a benevolent philanthropist in public, but his staggering fortune has been built by insider trading and bribery. This sticks in the craw of US Attorney (and later Attorney General of New York) Charles “Chuck” Rhoades, Jr. (peerless character actor Paul Giamatti) who has a fierce hatred of uber-rich white-collar criminals, along with a fierce love of kinky BDSM games with his dominatrix wife, Wendy (Maggie Siff). Yeah, it’s that kind of show.
Over the course of the series, these two natural enemies have battled each other while trying to conceal their own hidden natures from prying eyes, culminating in Axelrod copping a plea bargain and fleeing to Switzerland at the tail end of season five. But now he’s back in the picture, and a winner-takes-all rematch is on the cards.
Billions has drawn massive critical acclaim over the course of its run and boasts a stellar supporting cast, including Asia Kate Dillon as Taylor Amber Mason, Axelrod’s razor-sharp CIO (and the first major non-binary character and actor on American TV), David Costabile as Mike “Wags” Wagner, Axelrod’s sleazy, drug-addled right-hand man, and Condola Rashad as Kate Sacker, as Rhoades’ duplicitous 2IC. Plus there’s support from Jeffrey DeMunn, Sakina Jaffrey, and Daniel Breaker.
But really, we know what we’re here for: rich and powerful people doing unspeakable things. At the end of the day, Billions is pretty much Dynasty with added nipple clamps. And if that’s your jam, who are we to judge?
