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Ozark review – backwoods-noir crime tale returns with more moral murk

Jason Bateman and Laura Linney are getting down with the yokels in this second-season opener – and getting shot of an inconvenient dead body

Good news for fans of Jason Bateman looking scrawnier than usual while attempting to fast-talk his way out of precarious situations. Ozark – Netflix’s white-collar crime tale set against the beautiful but benighted backdrop of Missouri – has returned for a second 10-episode season and has upped the scenes of Bateman squirming through morally dubious quandaries while studiously avoiding any prolonged self-examination. The role of ethically flexible financial advisor Marty Byrde has turned out to be a great, Emmy-nominated fit for the actor; a hollowed-out, smarm-gone-sour variation of his usual harangued everyman.

Marty is still marooned in the Ozarks with his peeved wife Wendy (Laura Linney) and kids until he can make good on an escalating money-laundering deal with a callous Mexican drug cartel. After the lethal climax of season one, season two begins with a time-honoured genre trope: how will a verbal hustler such as Marty deal with the messy business of getting rid of a dead body? It helps if you are in cahoots with a grizzly local drug kingpin such as Jacob Snell (Peter Mullan), who efficiently shuts down Marty’s attempts to micromanage the disposal operation: “This is a drill we’re familiar with.”

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