The Philanthropist... it's about philanthropy...

Hands up everybody out there who wants to watch a show about a rich white guy who goes around saving poor black people?

All of your with your hands down can go home, the rest of you come with me.

The Philanthropist tells the story of a billionaire named Teddy Rist as played by Marc Antony from Rome. He’s super rich and then grows a super conscious while he’s in Nigeria during a flood and saves a little black boy. He then makes it his mission to deliver a vaccine to a random Nigerian village just so he can see this little black boy again.

Is it as dopey as I’m trying to make it sound? Not really. But sort of.

NBC has been bringing the drama goods of late with Southland and Kings and while The Philanthropist aims quite high and has production values out the wazzoo (especially all those sweeping Africa shots) it just falls short because it’s all kind of daffy and boring.

Teddy Rist our would be world saver is just kind of boring, he’s not as troubled or as interesting as they want him to be, he’s just kind of there. He’s like Superman. The problem with Superman is that he can do anything. Do you need to travel back in time? Superman can spin around the world backwards really fast and make that happen. Do you need to see through walls? Superman can do that too. Because Teddy’s a billionaire there doesn’t seem to be a scrape he can’t get out of because of that. It’s not like we’re watching a normal person having to survive the Nigerian jungles, we’re watching Teddy Rist, Guy Who Can Get Out Of Anything With A Wry Smile And A Hundred Dollar Bill. Does that make the whole proceedings rather pointless and boring? You bet.

Am I going to stop asking myself questions at some point? Probably not.

Here’s another question: Is this what the show is going to be like every single episode? Are we going to watch Teddy jet to some third world country solve a bunch of problems and then deliver a tiny box of vaccine to a bunch of English speaking foreigners? Is that all the show is?

The show boasts a pretty impressive cast on top of Marc Antony, you’ve got the black guy from The Wire and the black guy from Law & Order... plus Neve Campbell is in it... for no real apparent reason. But despite an “all” “star” “cast” and some pretty top notch production values there wasn’t a whole lot of story to invest in, unless you’re a fan of learning lessons like: you can solve all the world’s problems if you’re a billionaire and follow the ghost of your dead son through the jungle. Yeah, that actually happened. Like I said, it’s daffy.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad