If I were to choose a moment to release a television series that not only asks for, but requires, sympathy for a billionaire so obscenely rich that she is the third-wealthiest woman in America, I am not sure that I would launch it slap-bang in the middle of a rampant cost of living crisis. Still, Loot (Apple TV+) has an ace up its sleeve in the form of Maya Rudolph, who plays Molly Novak, soon to be Wells, also soon to be one of the most famous cheated-upon wives in the western world.
Molly is married to a tech baron, John Novak (Adam Scott, really putting in the work for Apple TV+ after Severance), and lives an airy, removed life of ultra-privilege and opulence. They have a mansion so vast that it makes the Selling Sunset team look like the estate agency who once let me a flat that had no sink, “but you can brush your teeth over the bath”. (I lived there for two years.) When she realises John has been having an affair with a much younger woman, she drives away from the marriage in one of their many colour-coordinated supercars, and gains $87bn in the divorce.
