THE DROPOUT
Tuesdays, BBC1
Rating: 
The story of the convicted American fraudster Elizabeth Holmes’s tech start-up Theranos is an example of contemporary hubris writ very large.
To the tune of an astonishing $9 billion – which is what Holmes’s company was valued at during its peak, her 50 per cent stake making her America’s youngest-ever female self-made billionaire.
Yet Theranos was failing to deliver anything close to the game-changing blood-testing technology (speedy, painless, needing just one drop) that Holmes had promised to the company’s famous investors – who included Rupert Murdoch, on board for $125 million.
Spun from a podcast of the same name, the TV series (first broadcast on Disney+ in 2022) is both a forensic look at Holmes’s blazing rise and spectacular fall (she was imprisoned for 11 years in 2022) and an edge-of-the-seat drama that entertains, informs and terrifies.
The story of the convicted American fraudster Elizabeth Holmes ‘s tech start-up Theranos is an example of contemporary hubris writ very large. Above: Amanda Seyfried as Holmes
Spun from a podcast of the same name, the TV series is both a forensic look at Holmes’s blazing rise and spectacular fall and an edge-of-the-seat drama that entertains, informs and terrifies. Above: Amanda Seyfried as Holmes
Central to its success is Amanda Seyfried as Holmes (above), who embodies a journey from obsessive teenager to obsessive late thirtysomething so brilliantly over eight addictive episodes that it bagged her an Emmy and a Golden Globe. It’s a very long way from Mamma Mia!
There’s also a great supporting cast, including Naveen Andrews (as Holmes’s lover/business mentor Sunny Balwani), Stephen Fry (as Theranos’s chief scientist Ian Gibbons) and – stealing the fourth episode – Alan Ruck, aka Succession’s Connor Roy, as ‘Dr Jay’ Rosan, an executive at US pharmacy chain Walgreens.
It’s during a pivotal, darkly comic scene in that episode (set in 2010 and tellingly titled Old White Men) that Rosan tells wavering fellow execs, ‘Look, everything is risky right now. The economy is tanking. Start-ups are the only thing making money… Twitter is worth $3.6 billion!’
‘Twitter’s not taking blood,’ observes the only dissenting voice. Yet, driven by the unthinkable possibility of missing out on the Next Big Tech Thing, none of the ‘old white men’ want to hear it.
As both compelling TV and a depressing metaphor for capitalism at its most chaotic, The Dropout can’t be bettered
As a poster girl for female tech bosses (a tiny gang even today), Holmes made the covers of Fortune and Forbes magazines.
By adopting a deep voice, Thatcher-style, and a black polo-neck, Steve Jobs-style, she assumed boardroom gravitas while revealing herself as a geeky Millennial by painting quotes from Star Wars’s Yoda on her HQ’s walls.
Holmes presumably thought she could keep the investment income flowing until the faulty tech finally caught up with her grand vision. Except it never did; it’s still not possible to run numerous complex tests using a single micro-drop of blood.
Her trial decided Holmes must have known her ‘vision’ was fatally flawed, effectively running Theranos as a Ponzi scheme.
The upshot was not just a jail term, however. She also made fools of those investors greedy and/or gullible enough to buy into the fantasy.
As both compelling TV and a depressing metaphor for capitalism at its most chaotic, The Dropout can’t be bettered.
Too excitable to be a total knockout
COMA
My5
Rating: 
In this pacy drama, mild-mannered Simon (Jason Watkins) intervenes when a homeless man is being harassed in the street, catching the attention of gobby, threatening teenage gang leader Jordan.
Soon enough Simon’s car is keyed, and after an altercation outside his house it’s a mere hop, skip and jump before Jordan is languishing in a coma… at the same hospital where Simon’s wife Beth (Claire Skinner) is a nurse.
In this pacy drama, mild-mannered Simon (Jason Watkins) intervenes when a homeless man is being harassed in the street, catching the attention of gobby, threatening teenage gang leader Jordan
Things start to unravel plot-wise, however, when Simon loses his job (just about managing not to punch his horrible slippery boss) and simultaneously makes a new, unwelcome ‘friend’ in Jordan’s dad, Paul (Boat Story’s Jonas Armstrong), himself a criminal who is wont to turn up on Simon’s doorstep.
Meanwhile, Simon is now a local newspaper hero for administering CPR to Jordan – but has old Harry (David Bradley,, with Skinner, Armstrong and Watkins) next door seen everything?
Despite a great cast (Watkins and Skinner’s actorly synergy was also seen in ITV’s McDonald & Dodds), after a strong start the series’ excitability (too much plot, too fast!) largely outweighed its strengths – right up to the bitter end.
Michael Portillo packs a lot into Great British Railway Journeys (Mon-Fri, BBC2). Last week he inspected an HS2 viaduct, visited ‘the seat of chair-making’ in High Wycombe and met chief execs of Oxfam and The Soil Association plus Longleat’s Ceawlin Thynn, the 8th Marquess of Bath.
After trying some train signalling and flying with the Navy at Yeovilton, Michael didn’t even get any downtime in a dining car. Anybody else wish they’d bring them back?
Paradise perfected
Death In Paradise fans will recall DI Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) previously busted crimes in Saint Marie.
Last year, Kris Marshall and his fiancée Martha resurfaced in Devon in Beyond Paradise
Last year, he and fiancée Martha (Not Going Out’s Sally Bretton, above with Marshall) resurfaced in Devon in Beyond Paradise (Fridays, BBC1).
Officer, I confess: I prefer BP to its progenitor. DIP’s sun-kissed cosy crime is replaced by something less twee, more spiky. Maybe it’s the weather.
‘You can’t do this job half-hearted. You’re either all in or all out!’
Charlie Fairhead, as a young nurse, gets some advice in a special episode to mark actor Derek Thompson’s finale in Casualty, BBC iPlayer
