‘Billionaire Island’ Netflix Series Review - Business and Pleasure

Billionaire Island gives you a lot of mixed signals. It can sometimes look lovely and sometimes lethargic as hell. I liked it a little, but I also think it isn't as good as it wants to be. Creators Anne Bjørnstad and Eilif Skodvin are clearly influenced by Succession. This influence, though, is pretty tame - the creators don't push their story towards extreme messiness. For a show that focuses on a cutthroat business, it fails to generate a strong atmosphere of chaos and tension. The events look ugly, but they rarely have an emotional effect on the audience. The subtle tone can sometimes feel indistinguishable from directorial indifference. There were moments when I wanted the screen to explode with vehemence. Billionaire Island, however, merely settled for a rough approximation of a similar sentiment. The scene where JJ (Vetle Røsten Granås) confronts his father (Kåre Conradi) about something related to a music teacher should have been intensely heartbreaking or uncomfortable, but it ends prematurely without any release or closure. Hence, it's somewhat weird to see the father and the son smiling and holding hands near the sixth episode's end. Billionaire Island has a habit of leaving certain things hanging in the air. Felix (Benjamin Bakkeid), apparently, is teased by some boys because of his unibrow, so he cuts the hair. How exactly does this act improve his situation is left unanswered. Billionaire Island, in fact, forgets about him as it moves forward. Hennie (Nemi Storm) gets stranded on a rock with her friends after an accident. She calls her family members, but none of them answer. You expect Hennie to go mad with rage, but everything is defused, and nothing significant arises from this event. She also receives some fish-related information from her Korean idol, K-Joy (Lee Jin-hyuk), which again doesn't bring any change to this character.

What you can infer from this fish moment is that celebrities have the power to affect the thinking of their fans. Their devotees spend a lot of time viewing and analyzing PR content. They spend their energies worshiping, defending, and admiring their favorite idols, while the idols themselves use their engagement to increase their fame. Even that father-son confrontation mentioned above carries the suggestion that parents shouldn't coddle their children. By inflating them with fake acclaim, they fill them with delusions about themselves, generating more harm than positive results. The JJ scene moves the story in some way. But whatever happens with Hennie looks disposable - nothing significant comes from her thread. As an ambitious actor, Røsten Granås has an intentionally wooden face, which gives rise to chuckles from the audience when he practices delivering a dramatic dialogue in front of a mirror. Conradi, as JJ's father, just wants to smoke weed and relax. He looks funny when he is too stoned to react to the news regarding her daughter's boat accident.

The main attraction of Billionaire Island has to be Trine Wiggen. She doesn't appear on the screen. She forcefully enters the frame. This no-nonsense woman exudes a self-assurance that says, "You don't have the guts to beat me in my game." Wiggen, as Julie Lange, has such a sharp, icy exterior that you, for a while, see her as a force of destruction - a cold-hearted villain. However, when someone points out to her that her daughter, Amy (Ragne Grande), has her father's physical features and her mother's killer instincts, she briefly looks extremely vulnerable. Something inside her softens, and her face melts. Julie loves her family members. It's just that she prioritizes business. I was very convinced by her words when she said she liked Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and considered Michael Douglas the villain. Only someone like her could come up with such an interpretation of Fatal Attraction. I again nodded when she described her assistant, Tiril (Ragnhild Risnes), as someone who would eat ice cream like Bridget Jones after a breakup. Tiril is a cute cartoon character. She will pair well with Rachel Marsh's Luna from Unstable.

Trine (Hanne Skille Reitan), after Julie, is another great thing about Billionaire Island. It's a pleasure to watch her descent into madness. With a broad smile and blood on her face, she looks like an unhinged serial killer who relishes cutting meat into various pieces. Skille Reitan gives her delirium a comic flavor that sends Billionaire Island into comedy heaven. It's almost impossible to suppress your smile when Trine is on the screen - she makes for a terrific opponent. Billionaire Island can be interesting at times. I like how our perception of Julie slowly changes. The same comment can be extended to Ivo (Axel Bøyum), who initially comes across as a leech sucking off JJ's money to fulfill his own ambitions but eventually shapes into a dedicated manager who wants to shine in his field, and his profession.

The series entwines the characters' professional lives with their personal drama. The two things have a significant effect on each other. There is an amusingly sensual scene where Amy helps Martin (Oddgeir Thune) to masturbate (he goes to the clinic to get his sperm tested). It's also nice how a scene involving an embarrassing movie screening isn't played on a high pitch to score easy points. With a cast consisting of Norwegians, Indians, Arabs, and Koreans, Billionaire Island ranks high on the diversity scale. Still, after six episodes, you are left with the feeling that this season should have had some more episodes. Some characters, and some beats, are not fleshed out properly, and the story never becomes too exciting or chaotic. Billionaire Island looks like a copy of an excellent corporate drama - a safe imitation that doesn't want its hands to be too soiled.

Final Score- [6/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times