Stream It Or Skip It: ‘This Giant Beast That Is The Global Economy’ On Amazon Prime, A Funny Docuseries Starring Kal Penn

Infoseries that combine information with comedy ride a fine line; too much shtick and not enough information can make people tune out quickly. Amazon’s new docuseries, This Giant Beast That Is The Global Economy, tries to teach people about the way the globe is connected through economic factors people don’t think about, and tries to do so with funny situations, occasional sketches and Kal Penn as the host. Does it work?

THIS GIANT BEAST THAT IS THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see Kal Penn washing, drying and ironing American currency, while his voice over says “Money laundering. What is it?”

The Gist: This Giant Beast That Is The Global Economy is a docuseries that tries to impart information about how truly interconnected the globe is via various economic factors, legal or otherwise. In the first episode, Penn tries to get to the bottom of exactly what money laundering is and how someone who has money obtained by illegal means can “clean” it through legitimate businesses. How he does it is interesting: He’ll try to launder a million dollars that’s in a bag that “falls out of the sky” (actually dropped from a ladder by a stagehand).

Penn traverses the globe, going from the U.S. to Germany (to talk to the journalist who first reported about the Panama Papers) to Cypress (money laundering capital of the world, though they’ve cracked down lately) to London (to talk to the whistleblower whose testimony led Cypress to change their laws). He finds out that laundering a “mere” million bucks isn’t as easy as he thought, but he also finds out how the money not only hopscotches the globe on its way back into its owners’ hands, but the real best place to clean money isn’t in Cypress… it’s in Delaware.

Other episodes examine why rich people are all dicks (or are they dicks because they’re rich?), why rubber is so essential to the global economy, why we don’t go back to barter instead of using money, the global industry around death, and more. In each episode, two sketches are inserted among the interviews and information to bring home some of the episode’s points in an entertaining way; the first episode features sketches with Joel McHale and Thomas Middleditch.

Our Take: Any docuseries that takes a funny look at serious issues — think W. Kamau Bell’s United Shades and Adam Ruins Everything as the best examples of this — lives and dies not with the host or the quality of the comedy, but on the actual information the show imparts. Through its shenanigans, viewers need to get interesting and surprising information, else the show is just telling them what they already know, causing them to tune out.

This Giant Beast That Is The Global Economy does about as good a job of this, at least in the first episode, as you might expect. It helps that Adam McKay and Will Ferrell are two of the executive producers — remember, McKay got an Oscar nomination for making an entertaining movie out of The Big Short, so they have a little bit of experience making dry issues funny. One thing is that Penn, with his comic timing and government experience (he worked for the Obama administration) has the right amount of authority and talent to pull off being this show’s host and not looking like a lightweight. Another is that the guests Penn talks to are very entertaining, like Humberto J. Aguilar, a lawyer who very matter-of-factly talks about how he got into the money laundering business and how much he loved doing it… until he got caught.

But, just like all shows of this type, we start looking for more info and less shtick as an episode goes along, and Giant Beast doesn’t quite know when to take it down a notch and when to bring the funny. Maybe other episodes will have more balance. But the first episode could have given us more information in the place of at least the Middleditch sketch equating how launderers of huge amounts getting around regulations is like a rich kid cheating on his college exams. Something like that just muddled the issue.

Sex and Skin: Can’t imagine what kind of sex and skin we’d ever see in a show about money laundering.

Parting Shot: After Kal successfully launders his money, he rents a rad house in Cyrpress and waits for someone to buy the house from him.

Sleeper Star: If you just watch one part of the first episode, watch Aguilar’s interview. He did things like pay hookers to pretend that they’re the CEOs of the shell companies he set up for clients, among other things.

Most Pilot-y Line: Kal wanted to call his shell company “69 Brothers.” What, is it going to be run by 12 year olds?

Our Call: STREAM IT. This Giant Beast That Is The Global Economy is one of those shows where you’re more likely to watch whatever episodes that interest you and leave others alone. And that’s OK. You’ll get an entertaining 45 minutes no matter what.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream This Giant Beast That Is The Global Economy on Amazon Prime Video