If you were a fan of Succession, like we were, did you ever think to yourself, “How much better would this show be if someone murdered Logan Roy and his death was being investigated?” No? Neither did we. But a new BritBox series marries Successtion-style drama in a super-rich family with a murder mystery. And we’re here for all of it.
Opening Shot: Sounds of a prison ward. A woman in prison sweats sits in a chair for a documentary interview, smoking while she talks.
The Gist: In the documentary footage, the woman in the prison garb is Sally Wright (Nikki Amuka-Bird), identified as the third wife of brick manufacturing mogul Jack Wright (Trevor Eve). We also see John Wright (Daniel Rigby), in full beard looking like a longshoreman, and older brother Gray Wright (John Simm), both identified as Jack’s sons from his first marriage. Finally, we see Emily Wright (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), identified as Jack’s only grandchild.
They’re all talking about Jack’s death, and the subsequent police investigation. But they’re also referring to all of the chaos that ensued within the family after his death.
Flash back two years. Jack is talking to Sally on the phone; she’s doing business in Paris. He expresses how much he loves her. Then he goes into a fieldhouse on his country estate and a shot rings out. He’s found the next morning, dead of a supposed self-inflicted gunshot wound. DCI Hector Morgan (Harry Lloyd) and DC Kat Jones (Liz Kingsman) investigate.
After Sally finds out, she calls Rose (Gemma Jones), Jack’s first wife, with whom she’s close. Rose then calls John, who is shaken but very tenuously steps into the void his father left after working for him for 25 years; the board votes him in as interim CEO, a position his wife Georgia (Zoë Tapper) thinks he deserves. John calls his older brother Gray, who is the “black sheep” of the family; he’s a record producer who hasn’t spoken to Jack or anyone else in his family in some time. He thinks that he’ll get some of his dad’s millions, hoping to pay off his debts to a local loan shark and boost the career of his girlfriend Laura (Rakhee Thakrar). Gray calls his daughter Emily, with whom he’s estranged; she lives in Silicon Valley and is about to launch a social media startup funded by her grandfather.
In the meantime, Sally tells the teenage children she had with Jack. While younger daughter Daisy (Eden Hollingsworth) is appropriately sad, older son Josh (Samuel Small), expresses how much he hated his father when he was alive, and feels even angrier at him now that he supposedly killed himself.
Sally is shocked to find out that Jack drafted a new will with a new lawyer a few months before his death, with a reading happening after his funeral. During the reading, they find out that not only is Emily put in charge of the company, all three of his sons get either very little money or none at all. And while Sally’s daughter Daisy gets money in a trust, Josh gets nothing and Sally only gets five years of free residence at the homes they shared together. Meanwhile, DCI Morgan finds out that no gunpowder residue was found on Jack’s body, meaning he likely did not off himself.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? I, Jack Wright is a cross between Succession and a BritBox/Acorn murder mystery series like The Chelsea Detective.
Our Take: Written by Chris Lang, I, Jack Wright is a juicy story about a family that wasn’t really all that together to begin with being torn even further apart by the suspicious death of its patriarch. We don’t know a ton about Jack Wright before his death, but it’s pretty obvious that he was a tough taskmaster of a father, who either fostered abject fear, abject scorn or a combination of the two. His extremely cruel revised will just makes things worse.
While you may be lulled into a false sense of what the show’s about by the mockumentary part that sees where everyone is two years after his death, those sections require some attention. It’s not just because of what everyone says, it’s because of what the two years have done to them physically and emotionally. The previously-glamorous Sally now has her hair pulled back in braids and is smoking like a chimney, full of attitude. Jack has gone from Windsor-knot-wearing business scion to full-on lumberjack. Emily does not seem like someone who is the CEO of a huge corporation. Gray is mostly the same, which may also say something about his last two years.
What we’re likely to see after this initial bomb-drop of a will reading is not only the murder investigation but scenes of the family fighting each other over the will and their place in the family. For instance, it was fascinating to watch the juxtaposition of the loving version of Amuka-Bird’s Sally with the hardened prison version we see two years after Jack’s death. This transformation, along with what happened to the rest of the people in Jack’s universe, will form the crux of the season, hopefully dovetailing into DCI Morgan’s investigation.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: “I know what you’re thinking. She’s the one in prison,” Sally says to the interviewer as “Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing” starts to play. “But it’s not that simple… is it?”
Sleeper Star: There aren’t that many actors who do barely controlled rage as well as John Simm, who plays Gray.
Most Pilot-y Line: After punching Gray square in the nose, his loan shark says, “50 grand, by next Friday. Sorry for your loss.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. I, Jack Wright has real potential to be a fun murder mystery combined with a dramedy about wealthy family conflict. The first episode certainly indicates that things will only get more explosive as the series goes along.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
