TOO SLICK: Ben Schwartz (l-r), Don Cheadle, Josh Lawson, and Kristen Bell star in the new Showtime series “House of Lies,” premiering Sunday. (Ken Regan/SHOWTIME)
Can you make a successful series based on despicably loathsome characters who use the “F” word so effing often, you’d think it was someone’s first name?
Effing-A you can. Think “The Sopranos,” think “Deadwood.”
And depending on your tolerance for corporate greed and people so amoral that they even steal from them, you might just love “House of Lies,” Showtime’s newest revolting humans series.
The series, based on the book “House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time,” is about a slick management consultant and his equally unlikable team of soulless, jaded, greedy MBAs.
Their job is to go into corporations mid-meltdown to make it all better — or at least make it all look better.
The lead greedy consultant is Marty Kaan (Don Cheadle), who runs the top management team at Galweather-Stearn management consulting firm.
His team is made up of Jeannie (Kristen Bell), Clyde (Ben Schwartz) and Doug (Josh Lawson).
Each one is more hateable than the next. No, they don’t kill rivals like Tony Soprano, they do worse: They protect the kinds of people who brought down the US economy because, hell, one Maybach leads to two. And two is never enough.
The premiere episode opens with an unforgettably beautiful scene.
Marty wakes up lying full-backal naked with an almost full-frontally naked woman. She is passed out from an overdose — or something.
He utters just one simple word upon finding out that the nearly dead woman he’s slept with is his comatose ex-wife. “F–k!” he utters.
I mean, seriously? Positively Shakespearean — no?
If you think it can’t get any sicker than that, their 8-year-old cross-dressing son walks in, sees his passed-out, drug-addled mother and simply says, “What’s mom doing here?”
Mom, it turns out, is also a top management consultant and is (when she’s sober) Marty’s top competitor.
She is also a lovable mom who says things about their son, Roscoe (Donis Leonard, Jr.), like, “He still loves me even though I forget to love him.”
Marty is no better. When hitting on underling Jeannie, he uses the poetic line, “Is your poop chute an option?”
Good thing Marty’s live-in dad (Glynn Turman) is a retired shrink and is there for Roscoe and Marty.
Not that he did a good job with Marty — or with Roscoe for that matter.
Each week, Marty’s “Pod” takes on a different company in distress — and it’s hard to know who is f
ooling whom.
Hey — it’s a family newspaper, OK?
Unlike the completely vile and revolting Showtime series “Shameless,” “House of Lies” somehow manages to be funny despite it all.
That’s mostly do to great casting. Cheadle, particularly, is brilliant.
And his “Pod” people are, too.
Do I care if any of them meets an untimely death? Abso-effing-lutely not!