Ozark Season 1 available July 21 on Netflix

The slow, grim seriousness of prestige TV dramas has become a sort of self-parody over time, and Netflix’s Ozark frequently comes close to being a caricature of its genre. Some strong performances and solid production values save the series from complete cartoonishness, but it indulges in many of the tired clichés of dramas that strain to be taken seriously, starting with its compromised antihero, a middle-aged family man with a dark side.

That’s Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), a Chicago financial planner with a wife and two kids who also happens to be a longtime money-launderer for a Mexican drug cartel. When Marty’s partner is caught skimming off the top, Marty makes a desperate deal with his dangerous boss to uproot his entire life to the small resort community around the Lake of the Ozarks in rural Missouri, where he’s convinced he can find new, untapped resources for cleaning dirty money.

Of course, things don’t go smoothly, and he has to deal with the local criminal element as well as an almost perversely dedicated FBI agent. The story unfolds agonizingly slowly—the entire first episode covers what could have been its opening 10 minutes, and the individual episodes could all be trimmed by 15 minutes or so. Bateman, who’s also a producer and directed several episodes, has too much smarm for a character who’s meant to be this formidable, although Laura Linney brings some grounded emotion and impressive inner strength to Marty’s equally corrupt wife Wendy. But the breakout star is Julia Garner as the pint-sized small-time criminal who becomes Marty’s right-hand woman and unlikely nemesis. The producers have come up with a somber, plodding, almost entirely humorless mix of Breaking Bad and Justified, when they should have made a show about this spitfire of a character, the only one in the ensemble who isn’t bringing everything down.