Twitter

Where to Stream:

Mad Dogs

Not to be undone by Netflix and Hulu, Amazon has been producing their own original content for the past few years and this week they are releasing a new round of pilots for free. Unlike a lot of other studios, Amazon will be taking viewer comments into consideration when it comes to deciding whether or not to pick these pilots up for full season orders. Check back here for all of Decider’s recaps.

Mad Dogs is about four forty-something besties who reunite in Belize to celebrate their old friend’s early retirement. Their friend is bizarrely wealthy and cagey about how he made all his money. The rich one makes an ominous declaration that he’s leaving the four of them his opulent home. Then, a dead goat is left in the pool, they steal a yacht, and then during a tense night of drinks, a man in a cat mask comes in with a gun threatening to kill them if the yacht isn’t returned. There’s also sex and blood and violence. So, you know, it’s a feel-good family fun time show*.

Actors Ben Chaplin, Michael Imperioli, Romany Malco, and Steve Zahn play the four guys thrust into a paradise that turns into a living hell, and Billy Zane plays their rich friend with perfectly impersonal hauteur. The Central American setting lends the show lush scenery and the show is well-directed. That said, Mad Dogs is a strange little beast of a pilot. What I mean is that it’s well-made and well-acted, but I’m not sure it feels like a television pilot. It seems more like the first half of tense feature-length thriller. However, it’s already been a successful television series in England, so I’m assuming the series has additional places to go. Also of note: the original British version actually features Chaplin in the Zane role.

I personally had a hard time connecting to the show. I have to honestly wonder if that’s because the show is so deeply about a group of middle-aged men. It’s not just that show stars five middle-aged men, but that they are obsessed with this fact. They immediately rag on each other for past times and egg each other on to have a good time now. These men are so desperate to reclaim the glory of the their youth that they push themselves into partying (and hooking up with women young enough to be their daughters). It should look as though they are grasping glory, but it comes across as depressing.

The show could be an ode to fraternity, but there’s a pivotal scene — the one with the creepy short hit man wearing a cat mask — where Zane’s character blisteringly berates each of the other men. These guys might have loved each other once as brothers, but they don’t seem to now. However, the show ends with the four visiting pals being forced to rely and depend on each other for better or worse.

Anyway, Belize looks like a pretty place to visit and Mad Dogs could shape up to be a thrilling season of television. I just wished I cared a little bit more. [Watch Mad Dogs on Amazon Instant Video]

*I’m being sarcastic.

Like what you see? Follow Decider on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation, and sign up for our email newsletters to be the first to know about streaming movies and TV news!

[Photos: Amazon]