Few actors bring as much smiling menace to a role as Christoph Waltz, and he has a doozy of one to showcase those qualities in “The Consultant,” a crackling Amazon series from the “Severance” school of “Boy, I’m glad I don’t work there.” Although the show doesn’t pay off quite as well as it starts, the getting-there is twisty enough to merit getting on board.
Adapted from Bentley Little’s novel, the story unfolds at a gaming company, CompWare, where the young genius who founded it suddenly dies. Without missing a beat, a consultant arrives to take over, introducing himself as Regus Patoff (Waltz), who awkwardly greets the understandably confused troops by saying, “Good morning, comrades,” and only becomes weirder from there, including an obsession with smell that prompts him to sniff his employees.
Although he claims to have been designated by the company’s late founder to succeed him, there are suspicious parts to Patoff’s story, beginning with the fact that he doesn’t appear to know what the product is or, based on a Google search, to even exist.
The task of investigating what’s really going on falls to the unlikely duo of an assistant, Elaine (“The White Lotus’” Brittany O’Grady) and a game designer, Craig (Nat Wolff), with the latter’s preoccupation with the mystery threatening to drive a wedge between him and his fiancée (Aimee Carrero), who understandably thinks he sounds as if he’s gone slightly off his rocker.
Writer/producer Tony Basgallop (who created Apple TV+’s “Servant”) and director Matt Shakman (“WandaVision”) establish a truly off-kilter tone, including the company’s ornate glass offices that resembles a giant hamster maze. The only real drawback is that they set up so many possibilities early regarding Patoff that the finishing kick, including flashbacks puttying in some key details, proves a minor letdown considering the places to which the story might have gone.
That said, the show works strictly as a thriller in terms of addictively pulling the viewer through its eight episodes, punctuated by darkly comic moments, and the Hitchcockian aspect of Elaine and Craig finding the reservoirs of strength to engage Patoff in this game of mental chess.
The Austrian star has owned these kind of roles since “Inglourious Basterds,” although the closest kin to this might be the micro-series he starred in for Quibi, “Most Dangerous Game,” not that anybody would remember it. The challenge he tackles here is particularly formidable, coming off as strange and even dangerous without being so bizarre as to send the CompWare staff fleeing into the streets.
Waltz isn’t “The Consultant’s” only asset, but everything beyond him feels like a bonus. Even with a few hiccups, watching him work is compensation enough to ensure that this Amazon series earns its stripes.
“The Consultant” premieres February 24 on Amazon Prime.
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