If I wish to hear about how billionaire tech bros are making the world worse, I can activate the information. If I wish to hear about how billionaire tech bros are making the world worse and at the very least snort about it, I can watch The Audacity.

Created by Jonathan Glatzer, a author and producer on Succession and Higher Name Saul, The Audacity takes a satirical sledgehammer to Silicon Valley. It tears into the tech world with reducing one-liners and a parade of ultra-wealthy, ultra-insecure “billionaire man youngsters” who typically really feel frighteningly acquainted.

What’s The Audacity about?

Amongst these man youngsters is Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen), the info mining CEO of tech firm Hypergnosis. He is a sleeveless vest filled with delusion and insecurity, a person who’s satisfied of his personal genius, but nonetheless wants these round him to validate stated genius.

His closest confidante is his strung-out therapist Dr. JoAnne Felder (Sarah Goldberg), who’s actually not getting paid sufficient to listen to about Duncan’s fraudulent exercise. Nevertheless, JoAnne’s report is not spotless both. Due to info from her classes with Duncan and the opposite tech titans she treats, she’s picked up sufficient confidential info to get into some severe insider buying and selling.

When Duncan discovers this, and when his personal inventory threatens to plummet, he blackmails JoAnne to assist him out, leading to a pointy, self-destructive spiral for each.

Billy Magnussen and Sarah Goldberg kill it in The Audacity.

There are few joys in tv larger than watching two nice actors have it out, and you will get loads of that in The Audacity because of Magnussen and Goldberg.

So typically a spotlight in supporting roles, from Into the Woods to HBO’s short-lived The Franchise, Magnussen takes middle stage together with his normal full-throttle dedication to ridiculousness. His Duncan is somebody you like to hate: smarmy, filled with himself, and at all times able to maintain digging deeper right into a gap if it means he’ll get what he needs. Magnussen channels every of Duncan’s flaws with glee, and the result’s cringe comedy gold.

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Whereas Duncan believes he is on high of the world, Goldberg’s JoAnne is all too conscious of the truth that she’s on the backside of the Silicon Valley pyramid. That fuels Goldberg’s impeccable tackle JoAnne’s constructing breakdown, as does Duncan’s blackmail and her strained relationship with teen son Orson (Everett Blunck). We have seen Goldberg play a girl shedding management earlier than, as Barry‘s Sally Reed. (Who may neglect her Season 3 elevator tirade?) Right here, she as soon as once more nails that very same stage of desperation, coupled with JoAnne’s extra composed therapist persona. Watching her go from therapist mode to panicked mode is one among The Audacity‘s darkly comedian highlights. Watching the 2 start to merge is even higher.

Magnussen and Goldberg’s chemistry is great, with Duncan and JoAnne wrestling for energy in more and more ridiculous methods. An early season spotlight? JoAnne preferring to drive her automobile off a street so as to keep away from interacting with an oncoming Duncan. He pulls into body with the goofiest smile on his face, appearing like her bestie despite the fact that he is straight-up utilizing her automobile knowledge to trace her. He believes he is dwelling in a tech thriller, whereas JoAnne’s totally in a horror film. That imbalance is a core a part of why JoAnne-Duncan dynamic works so nicely, but it surely’s additionally proof of The Audacity‘s tech bros’ complete delusion: They reside to this point above everybody else that they really feel they will do something.

The Audacity‘s Silicon Valley is downright sinister.

The Audacity builds out a full, horrifying world round Duncan and JoAnne. Disillusioned tech pioneers like Carl Bardolph (Zach Galifianakis) look down their noses at what Silicon Valley has turn into, all whereas looking for a approach again in. Mother and father like Duncan and his spouse Lili (Lucy Punch) attempt to make sure their daughter Jamison (Ava Telek) will get into Stanford by any means obligatory, hiring an elite workforce of coaches despite the fact that it makes her depressing. Elsewhere, inventor Martin Pfister (Simon Helberg) works tirelessly on perfecting an AI youngster, all whereas neglecting his personal daughter Tess (Thailey Roberge).

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For the present’s teen ensemble of Orson, Jamison, and Tess, alienation from their dad and mom is the norm. By means of their eyes, Silicon Valley turns into a nightmare place to develop up.

By means of the adults’ eyes, the Valley does not appear so fairly both, regardless of the lavish mansions or luxurious mud baths only a helicopter experience away in Napa. As a substitute of a tech heaven, it is a surreal tech dystopia, one the place a single algorithm can play God and package deal each little bit of an individual’s knowledge for exploitation. It might nearly really feel like science fiction if this type of knowledge mining know-how did not exist already, and that is a part of The Audacity‘s bleak enchantment: making us snort at ridiculousness that is only one step faraway from actuality.

“The world there’s not the world,” Orson says of Silicon Valley. He is proper. It is a bubble bursting with huge web worths and larger egos. However, The Audacity reminds us, that bubble has a significant influence on the actual world, and is not {that a} foolish, horrifying factor?

The Audacity was reviewed out of its premiere at SXSW. It premieres April 12 at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+.