Eddie Izzard is no fool. Like Wayne Malloy, the fleet-witted grifter he plays in "The Riches,” he can see a good opening. And when the second season of the acclaimed series bows at 9 p.m. Tuesday on FX, Izzard knows there will be audiences starving for new scripted shows.
And he's ready to take a captive audience, famished by the writers' strike, for every last bit of its full attention.
"We're coming out now when it's a great time to come out, because a lot of stuff normally out on television isn't out now,” Izzard said during a conference call with his "Riches” co-star Minnie Driver. "So, we're very happy to come out, do seven, and give it a big smack in the face.”
That's right, seven episodes. "The Riches,” a serialized drama about an itinerant family of criminals living among straight society in a gated community, debuted on FX in 2007 with a 13-episode season. It followed the HBO model: half the episodes of a Big Four network season but twice the quality.
But the Writers Guild of America strike in November meant that fans of "The Riches” would only get half as rich this year. Izzard, an executive producer on the show, said this required some ingenuity.
"The writers were obviously aware of this beforehand, and so we kind of built a cliffhanger halfway through the season,” he said. "So, it really didn't hurt us in any way. I think that's seven very strong episodes.
"The first season, if you watch it all the way through, the tone does move around somewhat. The second season, we just sort of knew where we were going,” Izzard said. "We locked down, we got on the railway lines, and we just went full steam ahead. So, I think it makes it like a tighter punch.”
Driver, the Oscar-nominated actress who plays Wayne's recently paroled wife, Dahlia, said this season's "short con” will be just as effective as last year's "long con.”
"It's going to leave the audience wanting more, which is a really good way to end a season,” Driver said. "We pick up literally 15 seconds from where we left off in season one.”
The Malloys of "The Riches” are "travelers,” a notoriously clandestine extended family that moves from town to town, doing bad roofing jobs or other shoddy work and skipping town before the authorities can get wind of their shady business. But the family of five lands in a good situation, thanks to purloined identities, living on a golf course, and must reconcile their wicked ways with the lifestyle of their neighborhood "buffers” — their derogatory term for people who work for a living.
As for Izzard, the wildly funny British comedian who earned his reputation as a cross-dressing performer before moving into film and television, he hopes that the first 20 episodes of "The Riches” are only the beginning of a long, dark ride. The series has reaped rapturous critical acclaim and respectable ratings, but Izzard wants the show to be epic.
"We like where it's going in the second season, and we're keen to go on through the ninth season,” Izzard said.
"Abso-bloody-lutely,” Driver said. "But it's by committee, isn't it? If it were just up to us and (series creator) Dimitry Lipkin, we'd be working every day of the year.”
Izzard said, "At the pilot, I was getting everyone to toast season four. So, we're constantly thinking through this thing all the way through a future end. So, whether anyone wants it or not, we're still here; we're going the full length.”
Despite dreams of a lengthy run, Driver said there is no hard-and-fast, long-term story line for the show. "The Riches” is a fluid operation; the writers are ready to go in any new direction with their characters.
"Neither should it be nailed down,” she said. "I think it would be incredibly inflexible and boring if it were.”
"It's all ideas and theories and maybes,” Izzard said. "Nothing really gets locked down until we actually shoot it. ... But there is this big, long journey of how far we can steal the American dream.”
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