Profit (1996)

Profit is a short-lived, somewhat trashy drama series from the heart of the 1990s, as is made clear when you watch it by the unmistaikable look and feel of American TV from that era - the lighting, the music, the clothes and the hairstyles; you couldn't be anywhen else.

In basic premise it resembles House of Cards (the original British version preceded it by six years) in having at their cores a charismatic lead character who plots and schemes to advance themselves, committing many heinous crimes along the way and, crucially, conspiring with the audience as they do so. In this they are of course both following in the crooked footsteps of Shakespeare's Richard iii.

The twist in this series then comes in the setting - not politics as such, but big business. Specifically the Corporate America of the 1990s, with main character Jim Profit (played by Adrian Pasdar) manipulating his way up the ranks of "Gracen & Gracen," a multinational company that does... business things. It is never made clear exactly what kind of corporation it is, just that it is very big, very successful, and very corrupt.

Each episode sees Profit trying to advance his own agenda (which might be to make money, secure promotion, eliminate rivals, or some combination of the three) while simultaneously having to avoid threats to his position, or even having his past crimes exposed by the more honest characters. He always ends up coming out on top, although the formula has a bit of flexibility in it - in that sometimes Profit gets rid of obstacles (and mannys) in his way permanently, while at other times the status quo is merely restored by the time the end credits roll.

Jim Profit is a character completely without scruples or any kind of morality, and from his rather too on-the-nose surname we can tell that he is an allegory for the capitalist system and its relentless pursuit of, yes, profit, no matter the cost. However, most of his one-off guest victims are shown to be morally worse even than him - they are murderous Russian gangsters, or rapists, or even (in the final episode) a predatory paedophile. This aids in allowing us to side with Profit and root for him, even as the show makes it clear he is not going up against these people out of any sense of altruism, but purely for his own gain.

Possibly the most interesting feature of the series is that it was one of the first to present the internets not as a futuristic, sci-fi concept, but as simply part of the characters' everyday lives, even if the SFX used to portray the internets looks hilariously far-fetched and unrealistic to modern eyes. In this way the show was ahead of its time, as it would be the better part of a decade later before the internets became an established feature of mainstream drama, rather than something extremely niche or exotic.

Another way in which Profit was ahead of its time was in having a villain protagonist, which was apparently not popular with viewers when it was first broadcast, leading to low ratings and the show being cancelled after only eight episodes. Since the turn of the century there have been several very successful series that contain elements of what Profit was trying to do - Dexter, Mad Men, Hannibal, to name only a few.

But a swift cancellation was most certainly the best thing that could have happened under the circumstances, since it allowed the series to gain the reputation of having been killed too soon 'before its time' rather than having been run into the ground over far more episodes than the formula could really sustain or justify. I'm sure I could name more than a few TV shows that fall into that category too.

The whole series, as well as a documentary about the making of the series, is currently available if you search in the Yousual places. In the meantime, here's a documentary clip about the writers' followup project: