Categories Announcement Billions Broadcast Media News

Pre-Order Billions Season 3 Now – Aug 3, 2018

Insider Tip

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | August 3, 2018

You can now pre-order Billions season 3 and all season 3 episodes will be available for streaming on iTunes 8/13/18.

Synopsis: The war between hedge fund king Bobby ‘Axe’ Axelrod and ruthless U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades has gone nuclear and the fallout could be devastating. They’ve crossed too many lines, broken too many laws and ruined too many lives. Now, for both men – and everyone around them – self-preservation is the name of the game. With everything on the line, they’ll do anything to save themselves. But when loyalty is bought and sold, who can you trust?

Categories Billions Review

Five Shows More People Should Be Watching – June 15, 2018

Billions: A Show With Great Scripts and a Fine Cast

by Megan McArdle | Washington Post | June 15, 2018

The temptation of writing about culture is always to find something to pan. Critical reviews flow easily from the fingertips, while applause involves the hard labor of finding 16 synonyms for “good.” But I ate my Wheaties this morning, and I’m looking for a challenge. So let’s talk about good shows — great shows, even. Shows that more people should be watching. People like you.

“Billions” (Showtime)

Another show with great scripts and a fine cast. (You may be sensing a theme here). This is high-finance as revenge-drama. The first three seasons portray a long-running cat-and-mouse game between hedge-fund titan Bobby Axelrod, played by Damian Lewis, and U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades, played by Paul Giamatti. But the showrunners haven’t given into the temptation to make Axelrod the bad guy and Rhoades the hero. Instead, we have twin protagonists — both badly flawed, but also deeply appealing.

The cast is terrific, the writing reminiscent of a less-manic Aaron Sorkin, and thanks to a different Sorkin (Andrew Ross, longtime finance reporter for the New York Times, and no relation to the creator of “The West Wing”), “Billions” is even a reasonably realistic portrayal of both finance and securities law. I suspect it isn’t getting the audience it deserves because people think finance is dull, but trust me, in the hands of this team, it never is.

Read the rest of the original article at Washington Post

Categories Billions Recap

From The Trader’s Desk: Recapping S3E12 ‘Elmsley Count’ – June 15, 2018

Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?

by Lady Trader | Fan Fun with Damian Lewis

Source: Showtime

Is this it? Can this really be the last “From the Trader’s Desk” for this season? Sadly, the answer is yes. I have enjoyed writing about Billions from the “Wall Street” side of the things, and hope you’ve enjoyed my posts as well. I also hope I helped with the “fin-speak” and in understanding the world of finance. On a personal note: I didn’t know if I would be able to contribute to FanFun when Billions started in March, after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma last summer. But, not only did I contribute almost every week, I feel I have done some of my best writing. Thank you Damianista, and everyone who reads our blog for helping me get back to normal!

Instead of a basic recap, I’ll look at the two relationships that were the backbone (from the financial side anyway) of this episode: Axe-Taylor and Taylor-Wendy. I know there was a flurry of “fin-speak” at the Spartan-Ives Capital Introduction Event at CitiField (my second home on many Saturdays!), but I won’t go into details about it. I don’t think they were relevant to the overall episode (as opposed to other times when it was the meat of the story). I have updated the Billions:Glossary with all the definitions, and as always, if there is something you’d like me to explain or give examples of, please let me know.

Continue reading From The Trader’s Desk: Recapping S3E12 ‘Elmsley Count’ – June 15, 2018

Categories Billions Review

What the Rest of TV Can Learn from Billions – July 14, 2018

The Showtime Drama is Built for Speed – and All the Better For It

by Alan Speinwall | RollingStone | June 14, 2018

Source: Showtime

The midpoint of Billions Season 3 featured a huge moment for the series to date: the Showtime drama’s arch-rivals, U.S. attorney Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) and hedge fund mogul Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis), facing each other across a dining room table and, with the help of Chuck’s wife/Axe’s therapist Wendy (Maggie Siff), acknowledging that they needed to join forces against a common enemy.

In today’s ultra-serialized drama landscape, it’s the kind of scene that almost any other show would have saved for the very end of its season finale, or the penultimate episode at the latest. Billions actually repeated this dynamic in its own finale, which we’ll get back to, but that it happened as early as Episode 6 was striking. Too many other shows that consider each season “a 13-hour movie” would have built the whole thing around that meeting, throwing complication after complication at Chuck, Wendy and Axe so that it would happen as close to the end of the year as possible, and that sense of wheel-spinning would have been palpable.

Continue reading What the Rest of TV Can Learn from Billions – July 14, 2018

Categories Billions Recap

Billions on Showtime 3.12: Elmsley Count – June 14, 2018

“Young lungs, so yeah.”

by JaniaJania | Fan Fun with Damian Lewis | June 14, 2018

Source: Showtime

It’s cap raise time for Axe Cap and everyone gets more than they bargained for in Billons Season 3, Episode 12, “Elmsley Count”. The season finale promises to be a doozy with so many threads to tie up.

Taylor is arriving late to the event. Before the uber gets there, they have a sit-down with Andolov, who in all his gross creepy generosity concedes that he would, then asks them to prognosticate on what newly minted Taylor Mason Cap can do for him.

At the cap raise, Axe fluffs up the allocators, then has Taylor deliver the money shot. They promise to take care of the money transparently.

All the mysteries revealed.

Axe takes his people to see The Hold Steady at the Hammerstein Ballroom and delivers chaste kisses of celebration to Wags and Wendy.

Continue reading Billions on Showtime 3.12: Elmsley Count – June 14, 2018

Categories Billions Review

How Showtime’s Billions Went From Dull to Dazzling – June 12, 2018

Improbably, a series seemingly about rich white guys measuring their dicks is an essential show of our era. (Okay, maybe not that improbable)

by Todd VanDerWerff | Vox |June 12, 2018

If you’ve been following the world of TV Twitter this spring, you probably know that a certain subset of this nation’s great, professionally paid TV viewers has gone a little goofy for Showtime’s Billions. Observe!

Continue reading How Showtime’s Billions Went From Dull to Dazzling – June 12, 2018

Categories Billions Review

How Billions Became One of TV’s Sharpest Critiques of Power – June 11, 2018

“As a Saga of Glittering Financial Warfare, Billions is Seemingly Lab-Engineered to Appeal to the Very People it Claims to be About”

by Helen Rosner | The New Yorker | June 11, 2018

Source: Showtime

For nearly three seasons, the Showtime drama “Billions” has been structured as a classic cat-and-mouse tale, a story of attack and defense between the impossibly powerful U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) and his nemesis, the impossibly powerful hedge-fund billionaire Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis). Chuck pursues an exhaustive federal case against Axelrod and his fund, Axe Capital, driven less by any direct evidence of wrongdoing than by a dogged jealousy—Chuck’s wife, Wendy (played, with beautifully deadpan intelligence, by Maggie Siff), is an employee of Axe Capital and one of Axelrod’s most intimate confidantes. There is, of course, plenty of wrongdoing for Chuck to uncover (“Billions” takes as axiomatic Honoré de Balzac’s observation that behind every great fortune is a great crime), and Axelrod uses his considerable financial resources twisting the world in knots to avoid being grazed by the sword of the righteous. On Chuck’s side, the game involves shady evidence-gathering tactics, flagrant witness manipulation, and copious back-room dealmaking. On Axe’s side, bottomless pockets are used to reward friends, eliminate problems, and settle old scores. Flying private to hang out with Metallica? You got it. Planting a camera in a government employee’s bedroom in order to blackmail her with a sex tape so that she’ll hand over inside information on Chuck’s case? Consider it done. (Spoilers abound from here on in. If you haven’t started watching the show yet but plan to start: yes, the first scene of the first episode is off-puttingly corny. It gets a whole lot better from there.)

Continue reading How Billions Became One of TV’s Sharpest Critiques of Power – June 11, 2018

Categories Billions Recap

Billions Wraps Season with High-Stakes Double Crosses – June 10, 2018

The Dog-Eat-Purebred-Dog World of Billions

by Brian Lowry | CNN | June 10, 2018

Source: Showtime

In the dog-eat-purebred-dog world of “Billions,” the fastest way to flip the script is to engineer a shift in existing alliances. The producers did precisely that in the niftily choreographed third-season finale, setting the stage for a pair of juicy plot lines in the season ahead.
Granted, the surprises couldn’t quite match the operatic highs of last season’s finishing twist, which saw U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) sell out various people around him — including his own father — in his headlong pursuit of bringing down hedge-fund wizard Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis).

Continue reading Billions Wraps Season with High-Stakes Double Crosses – June 10, 2018

Categories Billions Review

Billions Season 3 Awards – June 10, 2018

MVP, LVP, ROTY, CPOY, and Finale MVP, LVP

by Alec Hare | The Breakshot | June 10, 2018

Season 3

Wow. What a season! In Billions Season 3, the plot went left when we thought it would go straight and it went up when we thought it was going to go down. The showrunners pivoting the plot at every turn made this season unpredictable and fun. The season was basically two different seasons as the show resets in the middle. Not to mention in Season 4 we will be getting the return of the big three Chuck, Wendy, and Axe. Enough of that, it’s time to hand out Billions Season 3 Awards!!

Continue reading Billions Season 3 Awards – June 10, 2018

Categories Billions Print Media Recap

Billions Season 3, Episode 12 Finale Recap: Vulture – June 10, 2018

Pest Control

by Nicole Cliffe | Vulture | June 10, 2018

Source: Showtime

Elmsley Count

I’ll be honest: This was a real mixed bag for me! It’s a good episode (they’re all good episodes!) but as big Billions reveals go, “Elmsley Count” lacked the enjoyable punch of the Ice Juice double cross, or Donnie’s dying play, or even Axe and Chuck teaming up to save Wendy from insider trading charges. I kept waiting for a little something more to drop, and was … mildly disappointed? … when nothing did.

Even though I didn’t get the little something I particularly wanted, there were still lots of fun and shiny balls in the air, and it’s a mark of the show’s quality that I expected a few more of them to drop on someone’s foot when we least expected it. There’s been a firewall between The Axe Capital Situation and The Southern District Situation these last few episodes, in that their respective problems are not elaborately interconnected for once, and it can feel a little creaky moving from one to the other with only Wendy as a commonality.

Continue reading Billions Season 3, Episode 12 Finale Recap: Vulture – June 10, 2018

Categories Billions Print Media Recap

Billions Season 3, Episode 12 Finale Recap: Forbes – June 10, 2018

Billions’ Creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien Talk Season 3 Finale

by Dana Feldman | Forbes | June 10, 2018

Elmsley Count

The season finale of Billions entitled “Elmsley Count” was a stunner! Where to begin? Two major things have happened that will make the wait for season four very difficult for diehard fans. First, Axe now knows Taylor started their own shop. To say they are enemies is an understatement. Second, Chuck has been stabbed in the back by virtually everyone he works with. As we know, though he may be down, it will not be for long.

As Showtime’s No. 2 drama series, Billions averages 4.5-to-5 million weekly viewers across platforms and the show’s viewership has grown season-over-season. Throughout season two, the series grew on Sunday nights by more than 35% from premiere-to-finale. And, the season three premiere was the show’s highest-rated ever with the March 25 debut up 23% from last year. A fourth season is in the works and seeds have been planted leading up to the finale that prove how exciting season four is going to be! The writers are already working and filming will resume in the fall. Show creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien spoke with me about the third season and why they think it was such a hit with fans. More on this below.

Continue reading Billions Season 3, Episode 12 Finale Recap: Forbes – June 10, 2018

Categories Billions Recap

Billions on Showtime, Season 3 Episode 12: Elmsley Count – June 10, 2018

“As You Sow, So Shall You Reap”

by Damianista | Fan Fun with Damian Lewis | June 10, 2018

Source: Showtime

First things first: Thank you, Billions, for the wonderful Super Fan Season Finale event in New York, thanks to which Lady Trader, Lewisto and I were able to see the season finale a few days earlier with a room full of super fans and the show creators and show runners Brian Koppelman and David Levien, followed by a Q&A.

I have already thanked Mr. Koppelman and Mr. Levien at the event for giving us the BEST show on TV, but I want to repeat it here one more time: Hats off to the brilliant writers for creating and the wonderful cast for bringing this awesomeness to life for us!  Continue reading Billions on Showtime, Season 3 Episode 12: Elmsley Count – June 10, 2018