Ozark is now on Netflix: Breaking Bad’s bleaker successor

Ozark is now on Netflix, with Jason Bateman playing Marty Byrde well against type in a colder, darker answer to Breaking Bad.

Netflix Download

The story follows Marty Byrde, a Chicago financial adviser, husband, and father who launders money for a Mexican cartel. After his partner is caught skimming cash, Marty moves his family to the Missouri Ozarks to build a bigger operation and save his life. At first, the setup brings Walter White to mind, but Ozark pulls away from that comparison pretty quickly, thanks to its rural lake-country setting, its focus on financial crime, and the speed of the family’s slide into corruption.

Wendy Byrde, and eventually the Byrde children too, get pulled in almost immediately. Wendy becomes more active, and more ruthless, than Skyler White ever was, so Ozark feels less like the story of one man’s corruption and more like a family figuring out how useful power can be.

If you like prestige crime dramas, this one has a lot going for it: a bleaker atmosphere, graphic violence, a constant blue-toned dread, very little comic relief, and themes of capitalism, class, and compromise. The ending divided viewers, and its reviews never reached Breaking Bad territory, but it still became a big Netflix hit. Season 3’s premiere audience was more than triple Season 2’s, and by January 2022 the show had racked up more than 4 billion minutes watched in a single week.

You can watch Ozark on Netflix.