This is the sort of timing that no one could plan – we hope.

Showtime had set Sunday, March 15, as the second season opener of Black Monday at 10 p.m. ET, followed by episode two immediately after. The show is a loose drama-comedy centering on the 1987 stock market crash.

Then, on March 13, newspaper headlines proclaimed the worst Wall Street crash since 1987.

Hey, all we know is that the fictional crash is a lot more fun than the real one.

Don Cheadle (top) produces Black Monday (with many others, including Seth Rogen) and stars as Mo Monroe, a slick-talking chap who started a brokerage with Dawn Towner (Regina Hall, top). He lured the naive Blair Pfaff (Andrew Rannells, top), who happened to be engaged to the heiress Tiffany (Casey Wilson). His schemes were often blocked by the odd Lehman Brothers (both played by Ken Marino).

Then everything crashed – stocks, Mo's dreams, and one of the Lehmans, who was pushed from his skyscraper office and crashing onto, ironically, Mo's Lamborghini.

That's where things start now, shortly after the crash(es). Mo is, apparently, penniless and carless and on the lam. Dawn runs the brokerage, which is now almost all female. The surviving Lehman fumes.

And Blair has turned out to be calculating. Now he has money and publicity; he and Tiffany live in a hotel but are looking for something hyper-expensive.

The season-opener – two half-hours, back-to-back – flashes back to the early Mo-and-Dawn days. It also sees them now – Dawn fighting an old-boy network, Mo in very different circumstances. 

Like the movie The Big Short or the mini-series Valley of the Boom, this takes a whimsical view of people trying to get a quick fortune from stocks, schemes, and tech.

An ongoing drama, with richly drawn characters, it's also spiced with the humor of the ridiculous.

Crashes – fictional versions, at least – can be a lot of fun.