Given how far Riviera spilled over the top in its first season, it’s no surprise that Season 2 feels an apparent urge to go further.
A lavish crime-based soap opera set against the gorgeous backdrop of the Mediterranean, Riviera’s 10-episode second season launches Thursday on the subscription service Sundance Now.
In the first season, to recap briefly, Georgina Clios (Julia Stiles, top) discovered all sorts of unpleasant secrets in her high-end world after her husband Constantine (Anthony LaPaglia) had the misfortune of being on-board his yacht when it blew sky-high in a massive fireball.
Georgina, an American art curator who first met art aficionado Constantine in that professional capacity, quickly found herself at odds with much of Constantine’s family.
Since the core of that group was the children he had with his first wife Irina (Lena Olin), Georgia found herself cast as the outlier in a family that had grievous and deep-seated internal divisions, but was mostly united in wanting to keep Constantine’s assets out of the hands of this interloper who was also an American and a commoner.
Georgina, therefore, spent most of the first season navigating a series of fragile and shifting alliances with the family, notably Irina and alpha son Christos (Dimitri Leonidas), the presumptive heir to his father’s business empire.
This being a soap opera and all, both mother and son naturally are harboring and trying to suppress their own uncomfortable secrets. Throw in neurotic daughter Adriana (Roxane Duran) and elder son Adam (Iwan Rheon), who feels uneasy about the family wealth, and it’s no wonder Georgina’s closest friend and ally seems to be Robert Carver (Adrian Lester), a fellow American whose skillset involves moving stolen and forged artwork.
Fairly early in the season, when Georgina had only begun to see the Clios family in action and get some sense of how devious they could be, she had already decided that while the battle of the estate was raging, she would find out exactly what happened to Constantine.
That would soon mean unlocking all manner of secrets, large and small, that he had strategically withheld.
It also meant, for Georgina, shedding much of the already mottled moral code by which she was living.
Season 2 begins with Georgina wrapping up a loose end from that first season and almost paying big-time for it. Spoiler alert: She escapes. In fact, she emerges with a new friend, Daphne Al-Qadar (Poppy Delevigne), freshly married wife of another insanely wealthy businessman and a woman who it turns out knows more than anybody suspected. Or at least more than Georgina suspected.
Daphne has a twin brother, Nico (Jack Fox), and a mother, Lady Cassandra (Juliet Stevenson), who also soon become an unexpected part of Georgina’s quest.
Georgina, for her part, gets an uncle Jeff (Will Arnett) and a potential new love interest, Noah Levy (Gregory Fitoussi), an ex-soldier and now a pilot who does discreet work for – surprise – another mysterious person of unthinkable wealth.
And that’s just the setup. Game-changing plot twists start popping up in the first episode, and naturally, they send folks like Georgina down unexpected paths.
Riviera is more guilty pleasure than must-see TV. But by keeping the right spirit, the viewer can have as much fun as the cast.