Older readers who have a penchant for fast food (we like niches) will remember the McDonald’s promotions of the nineties based on a Monopoly game where lucky winners could win food, cars and cash prizes. The only thing is, there was a big burger shaped fraud at the heart of this prize sesame bun.
Writing in The Guardian Lucy Mangan calls McMillions “McMazing. McHonestly. You will hardly believe your McEyes and McEars. I advise, as with the viewing of all the best true-crime documentary series, a stiff drink before, during and after. You need to be both braced and blurred to be truly receptive to it all.” And as crime capers go, she thinks this is as feel-good as it gets: “it is a great story, made even greater by the fact that there is no harrowing suffering, no death, no catastrophic miscarriage of justice shown to be the result of systemic corruption as featured in much of this genre.”
Anita Singh in The Telegraph says, “The first episode, which sets up the story and introduces us to the key FBI characters, is great fun – imagine the Coen brothers directing a BBC daytime show about white-collar crime and you’re part-way there.” But she is clear that the star of the show is Doug Mathews, a rookie FBI agent: “when the case came in… he threw himself into solving it. As a TV contributor, Mathews is gold.” In the Los Angeles Times Robert Lloyd says the series’ “twisty, many-fingered, onion-layered story is tailor-made for cliffhangers and progressive reveals”. And he praises its rich cast, as McMillions “builds its story from an impressive number of voices, including FBI agents, McDonald’s executives, fraudsters and their family members (who in most cases are also ex-family members).”
Although, McMillions debuted on HBO in the US earlier this year, it has landed in the UK on Sky Documentaries, a new channel which we hope will be serving up more MustWatch fare over the coming months.
First shown May 2020. You can watch the trailer by pressing play on the show image, or by clicking here.
