Showtime's Black Monday is totally erratic and jarringly unfunny

The Hollywood Reporter

"The pilot is a gigantic hot mess of tonally clashing humor that doesn't work," says Tim Goodman, adding: "It's hard to imagine that a half-hour comedy set on Wall Street with Don Cheadle and Andrew Rannells in major parts could go off the rails so quickly and spectacularly, but Showtime's latest, Black Monday, does just that. And that's even before you factor in Regina Hall giving arguably the best performance in the bunch. Which means that if you're looking for a culprit here, you should circle back — as is often the case — to the writing. And in this instance, probably the overall direction and tone of the series, too."

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• Black Monday is too dependent on "prefabricated referentiality" -- viewers are "bludgeoned" with 1980s nostalgia
• The show doesn't trust that viewers understand its fast-paced jokes and references, so it rushes to contextualize or explain them
• Black Monday swaps out the white guys for Don Cheadle and Regina Hall, upending conventional portrayals of Wall Street
• It's less a comedy and more a contest to see who can make the most 1980s jokes
• Black Monday is basically a funnier version of the movie Wall Street
• Black Monday opts to tackle the potentially grim subject matter with fast-paced, cheerfully vulgar laughs delivered by a blue-chip cast
• Black Monday seems to be satirizing an idea of 1980s Wall Street excess, rather than anything that actually existed
• Black Monday is all too aware that this is well-trod territory
• How writers approached blending history with fiction