'The Audacity' review: Bitter, brutal send-up of Silicon Valley

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen) is the CEO of his own data mining company with a lot of problems — most of them inflicted by Duncan. A takeover that would have turned him into a billionaire has fallen through, and now he's looking for any investor to help prop up the sagging stock price. A pair of execs from Veterans Administration, led by Tom Ruffage (Rob Corddry), might be of some help, but Duncan tosses them aside after setting his sights on a much bigger fish — Carl Bardolph (Zach Galifianakis), a mysterious and possibly dangerous tech titan. Both Duncan and Carl are under the care of a therapist, Joanne Felder (Sarah Goldberg, "Barry"). She knows a lot about them and their businesses — too much.

This eight-parter (a second season has been ordered) from Jonathan Glatzer ("Succession") has quite a cast, including Simon Helberg ("The Big Bang Theory") who plays an AI inventor; Paul Adelstein, the husband of Joanne (also a therapist), and Lucy Punch, as Duncan's wife.

MY SAY At least through the first half of this opening season, "The Audacity" is a string of ideas, or a sustained argument, in search of an engaging TV series. Those ideas and that argument feel vital if only because they are so buzzy (or self-apparent) at the moment. America and the world are now run by a pact of Silicon Valley "billionaire man-children" (Joanne's appraisal) who are raging narcissists with far too much power and far too little self-awareness.

Sounds familiar (or fun?) Then this is your show.

We've seen those ideas, this argument, these tech bros in action before, sometimes to considerable effect. AMC's "Halt and Catch Fire" captured some of the energy (and insanity) of the proto-digital revolution. HBO's "Silicon Valley" was pure found-comedy. Last May's "Mountainhead" (also HBO) was a hilarious takedown of tech lord megalomaniacs who bungle a murder attempt.

They were each dark comedies and "The Audacity" is too. Otherwise it's a series of nicely crafted and acted set pieces that methodically tear down the protagonists scene by scene, word by word. Magnussen's Duncan is a fake-it-til-you-make-it type who's both windbag and punching bag. Desperate for investors, he pivots from one pitch to the next, until one sticks or he finds a mark. Everyone else has a side hustle too — the spouses, therapists, teenage kids, even the principal at the fancy private school — because with all that money swirling around, they're forced to come up with their own scams. Like Duncan, they too are talking (or spinning) as fast as they can.

"The Audacity" does have "Prestige TV" slathered all over it, but you're left to wonder whether it's surface prestige, or, like its characters, talking and spinning as fast as it can too. There is an enormous volume of talk, and while some of the lines draw blood or are flat-out funny (Duncan: "I eat empathy for breakfast"), "The Audacity" is mostly just a brutal, unrelenting takedown, its contempt almost suffocating.

Where in fact is all this contempt leading? A gun turns up in an early episode, and as everyone (or Chekhov) knows, it had better be fired by the final act. "The Audacity" could end up a tragedy, except the show insists the tragedy has already happened, and we're the victims — the easy marks of sociopaths, con men, and charlatans, or as Joanne observes, "toxic men [who] succeed because the fear they create produces loyalty."

Another good line and compelling idea that could eventually build into a compulsively watchable series? Perhaps. So far, not yet.

BOTTOM LINE Bitter, brutal, depressing.