The Riches

The best cons work because they're too outrageous to be lies. The Malloys are betting everything on it. Eddie Izzard ("Glorious," "Dress to Kill") brings raffish charisma to "The Riches," Dmitry Lipkin's sneaky satirical drama for FX about a family of con artists who lie their way into a wealthy gated community. Wayne and Dahlia Malloy (Izzard and Minnie Driver, "Grosse Pointe Blank") are Travellers - part of a clan of American nomads - who run afoul of their own people and hit the road with their three kids, Cael (Noel Fisher), Di Di (Shannon Woodward) and Sam (Aidan Mitchell). When a confrontation with rival Travellers leads to a deadly car accident, the Malloys take over the dead couple's brand-new home, a mansion bought sight unseen over the internet, and assume their identities as Doug and Cherien Rich. Before long, the whole family is living a lie in plain sight, hoping nobody looks too closely. The premise stretches plausibility, but that's part of the fun. Any successful con forces the mark to accept something absurd, because who would tell a lie that preposterous? The pleasure of trickery drives the show. Wayne weasels his way into a job as the lawyer for an obnoxious real estate developer, Dahlia persuades a private school to admit her kids after the deadline and the children find their hustling skills serve them surprisingly well in a surface-obsessed suburban world. But the family's elaborate architecture of lies grows more precarious by the day, constantly threatened by the risk of exposure and the vengeful Travellers they left behind. Over two seasons, every close call raises the stakes, and the question isn't whether the lies will catch up with them, but when. Ironically, some of the most compelling moments are flashes of honesty. In one early episode, Cael realizes the Traveller girl he loves has set him up, and the two stare at each other across a diner table, wordlessly heartbroken. The whole cast is terrific. Woodward shines as the smart, conflicted Di Di, and Margo Martindale ("Paris, je t'aime," "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story") routinely steals scenes as the Riches' unhappy neighbor. Driver is superb, Southern accent and all, but it's Izzard who captures the soul of a man who lives by his wits, navigating the world with a wink and a stream of beguiling words. As the Malloys learn, it's easy to pretend to be someone else. The hard part is remembering who you really are.