A good overview, which was revelatory in the way that it showed how embedded Madoff was in Wall Street and made me wonder to what extent this allowed or permitted the length of his fraud to go undetected. But the programme was an appalling indictment of the system that, essentially, self-governs itself which, as with police and other areas, does not work, due to the closing of ranks and support for colleagues. Inn itself this is is fine, understandable and commendable BUT there need to be organizations and systems that do not rely or make use of this as this means, when push comes to shove, most likely be ineffective.
I found the dramatic device of using actors representing the major players in slo-mo, often as background, a very pretentiously irritating device and one that was a distraction as well as not having any real importance or value. Towards the end of the last episode there was a clumsy attempt to ‘explain’ this by suggesting that as the whole Madoff scandal was based on smoke and mirrors with nothing being real, so this device was a visual representation of the world that Madoff created for others to perceive. But the programme explained and showed that and it did not need this rather pretentious device to underline the obvious. Likewise, the title sequence was lurid and tabloid-style obvious. The story itself was gripping enough without the need to gussy it up. However, the aftermath was very powerful showing, rather cursorily however, the impact and fallout on the Madoff family. Almost enough to allow a twinge of sympathy. But not quite.