Stream It Or Skip It?

Dramas that involve organized crime families tend to be sprawling in nature, with a lot of characters and storylines. The best ones mesh those elements together well, but others don’t seem to know what to do with all of the stories and characters they’ve set up. That’s the case with a new crime drama from Brazil.

Opening Shot: “Campos dos Goytacazes, Rio de Janeiro.” A man walks through his restaurant, defending his wait staff and seeing how his customers are doing.

The Gist: Profeta Moraes (André Lamoglia) has expanded the business of his family’s restaurant and illegal gambling empire in the suburban neighborhood in Campos, and he’s looking to expand the family’s empire. His plan: To steal a shipment of slot machines that will be operated by the Guerra family, most notably Búfalo (Xamã), an ex-MMA fighter who is about to marry Suzana (Giullia Buscaccio), the daughter of the family’s ailing patriarch, Jorge Guerra (Roberto Pirillo). The idea is to turn the family’s longtime manager, Gerson (Marcello Gonçalves) against the Guerras as Búfalo takes over.

His father, Nélio (Adriano Garib), is skeptical but accepts the plan, sending Profeta’s brothers Nelinho (Pedro Lamin) and Esqueleto (Ruan Aguiar) with him. The plan definitely doesn’t go as planned, and the brothers are a bit annoyed at some of the things their little brother does when things go sideways, but they pull off the heist.

The second part of the plan is to go to the wedding of Búfalo and Suzana in order to meet and ingratiate himself to Gerson. As expected, Suzana is the mastermind behind the plan for Búfalo to take over the Guerra family business, slipping the symbolic ring off her father’s finger and putting it on Búfalo’s hand during the wedding reception. Suzana’s sister Mirna (Mel Maia), is definitely not in favor of this transition, and part of her plan to take over is to sleep with Profeta.

In the meantime, Galego Fernandez (Chico Diaz), who is as old guard as Jorge Guerra is, is in the middle of making a deal with a French developer to bring legitimate gambling to Rio. But he and the rest of “the Board” of organized crime bosses want to make sure that Búfalo knows that that truckload of slot machines, which was to be controlled by the Board, needs to materialize soon. As the machines remain missing, an increasingly enraged Búfalo blames Gerson for losing them.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Rulers Of Fortune is like Narcos, but with gambling.

Our Take: There is a lot going on in the first episode of Rulers Of Fortune, perhaps too much. The show’s creator, Heitor Dhalia, seems to think of the show as less a crime drama and more like a soap opera, which is why there are four families (we haven’t been introduced to the Saads yet), with intersecting businesses, interests and romantic partners.

It certainly gets confusing, especially given that the business that Profeta is trying to infiltrate is illegal gambling, not drugs or anything you usually see in organized crime dramas. Part of the confusion is that gambling is becoming legalized in Brazil, and it seems that the legalization will intrude on the business of these families. But it also seems that old schoolers like Galego are trying to keep their hands in it, whether it’s legitimate or not. So we don’t even know where Galego’s loyalties stand, especially as the hotheaded Búfalo takes over his friend Jorge’s family.

To be honest, we were spending so much energy trying to figure out who everyone is and what business they’re trying to protect that we just couldn’t get into the intersecting stories, especially because there doesn’t seem to be a redeemable character in the bunch, even if being redeemable in this case means being the most honorable person in a group of criminals.

Sex and Skin: The sex scenes don’t show much, but we see some bare butts in a nicely-shot swimming scene.

Parting Shot: Búfalo exacts his anger on Gerson, and wants his thugs to find out where Profeta is.

Sleeper Star: Juliana Paes plays Leila Fernandez, who knew Profeta’s mother, and seems to be very intrigued by Profeta’s attempts to worm his way into Rio’s biggest underground criminal enterprise.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I don’t joke about money,” says Galego to his French contact. “I don’t. It’s bad luck.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. Rulers Of Fortune has too many characters and too much going on for us to latch onto a story that isn’t all that interesting to begin with.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.