'Bookie,' A New Series On Max, Is A Losing Bet

I’m the absolute target audience for Max’s new series, Bookie. Why? I’m a dude, I’m a gambler, I cover the sports betting industry, I’m 25-54, I’m solidly middle class with disposable income, and, perhaps more than anything else, I’m a sucker for the Max machine.

Put a show on Max — you know, what used to be HBO — and I’m a -600 favorite to love it. The Sopranos, The Wire, Veep … the list goes on and on and on. Heck, I watched every episode of John From Cincinnati. I will try anything this crew offers, and I will generally stick with it.

But after watching the first two episodes of Bookie … well, I suppose there’s a reason this is a Thursday streamer for the network instead of a Sunday night tentpole. 

The show stars Sebastian Maniscalco as Danny, a bookie in Los Angeles. Now, to be fair, I don’t know a whole lot about the actual underworld of street bookmaking, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t usually involve Charlie Sheen, a potential murder, a suicide, a second kinda-sorta but not really murder, transgender deadbeats, magic mushrooms, $150,000 watches, hookers with attitude, a running “joke” about cash that smells like human feces, and the quickest car repossession in the history of mankind — and all within a roughly 24-hour time frame.

I’m also reasonably certain that the characters that inhabit the real world of street books aren’t straight from central casting. Danny, the Italian bookmaker. His muscle, the Black ex-NFL player who lost his millions and has fathered at least three kids out of wedlock. The muscle’s grandma, a sassy know-it-all. Danny’s girlfriend, who he met during her overnight shift at — one guess — Binion’s.

Not to mention, every client doesn’t pay, and Danny and his muscle come up with increasingly wacky ways to gain entry into these people’s lives.

Chuck strikes out

This show is the brainchild of Chuck Lorre, he of Two and a Half Men and, more recently, the truly dynamite The Kominsky Method. The latter show, starring Michael Douglas and the late Alan Arkin, was understated, sweet, and true-to-life. Bookie, on the other hand, is over the top, lewd, and fugazi.

I laughed once, for the record, and it was during a brief conversation between Danny and his Lyft driver, played by Jorge Garcia, formerly of Lost. He plays a marijuana dealer put out of business when the state legalized weed.

“Only a matter of time before California legalizes sports betting,” he says to Danny.

“Nah, the Indian casinos will never allow it,” Danny replies.

“Oh yeah, the government never f***s over Indians.”

It turned out to be a particularly topical exchange given the latest news regarding California sports betting, the ongoing attempts to legalize betting apps, and the tribal response to those attempts.

The rest of the one-liners fell flat, at least to my ears, and “sports betting” discussions and/or hat tips were pretty much just window dressing. Make Danny a drug dealer, or a car thief, or — like his sister, who is also his secretary/treasurer because all bookies have secretary/treasurers — a homegrown magic mushroom farmer, and the show really doesn’t change one bit. Any low-level crime will fit.

If I weren’t neck deep in the sports betting world myself, would I be so harsh? That’s hard to say. Maybe I wouldn’t be watching with such a critical eye. But alas, I am watching with a critical eye, and not even the sight of Ray Romano, in the series’ opening scene, calling in a “three-game parlay: KC -6.5, Browns-Ravens first quarter under 10, and the Jags +3.5” can save this show from itself.

I wanted to like it. I wanted to love it. But it’s just a fast-paced non-farce that has, at its core, precious little to do with sports betting. I say it’s +800 it gets a second season.