Black Monday, in the historical sense, refers to 19 October 1987, the single worst day for America’s stock market in its history. It’s a potentially risky premise around which to build a TV show, given that the event, which didn’t induce a crippling economic depression, doesn’t loom particularly large in either pop cultural memory or the actual memory of anyone under 30. But the Dow Jones still dropped 22.6 points on Black Monday, which is about the level of subtlety on this new series of the same name.Black Monday Season 1-3 Download.
The Seth Rogen-produced show, which attempts to tell the unknown story behind who and what caused the crash, begins on the titular day with a hollowed-out Wall Street and a body dropping on to a car. It then jumps backwards, to 1986, and to the presumed triggers of Black Monday: brash Maurice “Mo” Monroe (Don Cheadle) leader of his outsiders band of traders, the Jammer Group; his deputy trader and ex-lover, Dawn Towner (Regina Hall); and aw-shucks Blair Pfaff (Andrew Rannells) a fresh Wharton grad with an algorithm and a serious girlfriend, both potentially lucrative.
Monroe, recently deemed the 11th best trader by the Wall Street Journal, is bent on finding a higher high, be it a Lehman Brothers-owned property or another mound of cocaine. The first couple of episodes, though they include some truly surprising plot twists, serve mostly to establish the frenetic volatility of the characters and the 1980s Wall Street they inhabit. By 1980s, I mean the version of the 1980s that pop culture has established as THE EIGHTIES, a Technicolor and synth-blazed affair of Run DMC, Marion Barry references, big hair and bigger egos.Inflated sense of power, high stakes, big hip thrusts, bold instances of sexual harassment – Black Monday packs it all in, to the unfortunate effect of flattening its characters. As a cable series, Black Monday has the toys of prestige TV at its disposal.