How Amazon’s new show The Consultant, starring Christoph Waltz as ‘the boss from hell’, satirises toxic post-pandemic workplaces
- The Amazon series, about the evil boss of a tanking tech firm, aims to keep viewers ‘off balance’, with Waltz by turns charming and menacing
- Its release comes at a tumultuous time for companies like Google and Yahoo, and plays on the idea that the workplace is no longer safe after the pandemic
Think your boss is bad? The one in new TV series The Consultant phones his workers in the middle of the night, ends all remote work, fires people with long-term illnesses, invites himself to after-work staff drinks and clips his nails at his desk. He might also be a murderer.
That’s what awaits the anxious employees of fictional Los Angeles-based gaming company CompWare every day as a new consultant steers the firm through tough economic times. The new boss is weird and secretive, and might throw a gagged person into your car and tell you to just drive.
“There is a sense of just being off balance the entire time. You never know what to expect,” says executive producer and director of the show’s pilot episode, Matt Shakman.
“You don’t know what to expect character-wise, story-wise, or even tone and style[-wise]. And that’s what really drew me to this. This felt like a world and a show that I had never seen before or been a part of creating before. It feels wholly original.”
The show’s creator and executive producer Tony Basgallop originally set out to make a work-based thriller, and someone recommended American author Bentley Little’s 2015 novel The Consultant.