Is the Amazon series The Consultant with Christoph Waltz worth it?

Christoph Waltz has embodied some iconic villains. In addition to the Bond villain Ernst Blofeld, he thrilled as the terrifying Hans Landa in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and even won an Oscar for it. In the new Amazon series He now plays The Consultant, a no less diabolical villain.

The 8-episode first season of The Consultant is available to stream in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video since February 24th. In it, Christoph Waltz unleashes as a quirky management consultant bitter power games in the offices of a gaming company. But is the series worth your time?

New at Amazon: This is what you can expect in the thriller series The Consultant

The Consultant series starts with a bang. Sang Woo, the young CEO of a small web game development studio, dies tragically. How should things continue with the company CompWare? There’s already trudging the enigmatic management consultant Regus Patoff (Christoph Waltz) through the door. His mission: to monitor, simplify and improve business processes.

Watch the German trailer for the Amazon series The Consultant here:

There is something very wrong with this man, however. That becomes clear right at the beginning when Patoff has a Phobia for glass stairs expresses or the employees literally sniffed. And since CompWare is currently without leadership, he quickly takes over this post himself.

Patoff’s operations restructuring measures are extreme and unconventional. His first official act: All home office employees are given a period of 60 minutes to see him personally. Anyone who comes too late will be mercilessly dismissed. Later he allocates coveted individual offices according to the motto: “First come, first served”. The result: anarchic chaos and violence.

At the heart of Patoff’s bizarre power games are programmer Craig (Nat Wolff) and creative consultant Elaine (Brittany O’Grady), whose loyalty is being tested in increasingly drastic (and rarely legal) ways. Who blindly trusts the boss, is looking forward to a steep career. However, if you disappoint him, you must expect to lose everything that means something to him.

This boss may seem nice at first glance. However, he is ready to destroy life. Craig and Elaine don’t have much time to get to the bottom of Patoff’s true motives and dark secrets. An urgent question that needs to be answered: Why did the first meeting between the management consultant and the late CompWare boss end after a few minutes with one blow job?

Christoph Waltz as a horror boss: is the Amazon series The Consultant worth it?

The creative mind behind The Consultant is Tony Basgallop, who previously developed the unusual horror series Servant for Apple TV+ with M. Night Shyamalan. His new series also relies on one at the same time menacing as well as bizarre atmospherewhich is successfully staged here by directors such as Matt Shakman (WandaVision) and Karyn Kusama (The Invitation).

At the center of the series is of course the mystery: Who is this Regus Patoff really? Is he a supernatural being or just a sociopath, who knows how to exploit the ambitions of his victims in a perfidious way? Like Servant, The Consultant largely refuses to give unequivocal answers. Riddle yourselfWhat is behind the increasingly strange occurrences and revelations is what makes the series so fascinating.

The Consultant not only convinces as Mixture of oppressive psychological thriller and bizarre office satire. The highlight of the series is (as you might expect) Christoph Waltz as the eccentric and obscure bully. With his often unpleasantly distorted smile, he provides numerous shuddering and black humorous moments.

In the end, however, remains unfortunately unfulfilled desire for more chaos, more anarchy and more escalation. Because The Consultant never knows how to fully exploit their own potential. Apple’s mystery thriller Severance has already impressively demonstrated how frightening and disturbing office horror can be. You shouldn’t expect a comparably engaging series experience here.

Nevertheless, with The Consultant you can expect an entertaining and, above all, short-lived binge as well as a fascinating series villain with maximum creep factor. And when Christophs Waltz’ credits song “My Way” sounds at the end, the 8×30 minutes alone are worth it.

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