hen Ozark premiered in 2017, viewers were concerned about its familiar premise. Buttoned-up family man gets embroiled in the operations of a Mexican drugs cartel? So far so Breaking Bad. Qualms were soon eased thanks to the darkly humorous show’s avalanche of binge-worthy cliffhangers, (im)moral dilemmas and the ever-twisting loyalties of its characters. Ozark follows the misadventures of Marty Byrde (the perpetually clenched Jason Bateman), a financial adviser forced to relocate from Chicago to Osage Beach, Missouri, where he launders money on a scale that would give Al Capone a cluster migraine. With more balls in the air than a three-armed juggler, Marty has to find ever more ways to please the cartel, handle the scruples of upset locals and outwit the FBI. He also strives to keep his family together, both figuratively and in terms of preventing their dismemberment by angry drug dealers. Unlike similar crime shows, Ozark has the advantage of actually bothering with well-rounded female roles. Laura Linney plays Marty’s wife Wendy, who takes things in her stride to the extent of channelling both Lady Macbeth and The Jungle Book’s Kaa. Dressed in pair after pair of power culottes, Janet McTeer plays the icy cartel attorney Helen. Others sucked into Marty’s unmanageable shitstorm range from the sympathetic (bar owner Rachel) to the psychopathic (impulsively violent queenpin Darlene). Brilliantly performed by Julia Garner, Osage crim Ruth Langmore, however, is the real hero of the show. A case of local-girl-makes-badass, she has countless conflicts to navigate, her own homicidal tendencies rising from necessity rather than cruelty. But, while it never exactly held back on ridiculousness, Ozark finally lost it (spoiler alert!) in season three. A bed in the Byrde home was left vacant after the departure of Buddy, the household’s kindly, rifle-toting tenant. This was filled by the arrival of Wendy’s brother, Ben. Hardly a nuanced or sensitive portrayal of mental illness, Ben has bipolar disorder and refuses to take his meds. Hey presto, he’s soon flying off the handle whenever it’s least convenient for his lawbreaking relatives, while failing to grasp the gravity of literally anything. Already clumsily written, the part is played by Tom Pelphrey, who cut his teeth in soap operas. Although he says he researched the condition in question, Pelphrey acts as if he glanced at Brad Pitt’s scenery-chewing turn in 12 Monkeys and never looked back. This route-one semblance of mania serves only to artificially ramp up the storyline, which is also riddled with plot holes, from addresses and phone numbers Ben seems to psychically acquire to homes that have a remarkable lack of security given they house the associates of a warring drug baron. Having once focused on gradually developing its established characters – even those whose existence largely involved floundering around in moist-browed panic mode – Ozark suffered when it awkwardly shoehorned in a volatile new one. It’s a very fine line between shake-up and shark-jump. Ozark crossed it.