CHASING UNICORNS (THE DROPOUT)

It started out as an ABC News podcast in the United States in March 2019.

However the story of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her rise and fall was always too good to be kept out of the hands of dramatists.

The downfall of Holmes, who recently received an 11 year jail sentence for fraud, is a modern day fable.

Her rapid descent from start-up hero to corporate villain is a cautionary tale with huge implications not just for business.

'Saturday Night Live' star Kate McKinnon was the first to latch onto the potential of the story, teaming up with the podcast's host Rebecca Jarvis and producers Taylor Dunn and Victoria Jarvis to acquire the rights for Hulu and Disney+.

'New Girl' creator Elizabeth Merriwether was also brought on board as as the showrunner - a smart move which pays off in spades because 'The Dropout' is a compelling eight part drama.

Amanda Seyfreid is cast as Holmes, whose biotech company faked results to make millions of dollars and earn her a place among exalted figures from the worlds of business and politics.

Directed by Michael Showalter of 'The Big Sick' fame, Francesca Gregorini and Erica Watson, 'Thr Dropout' is an often breathtaking examination of an entrepreneur who would do anything for money and adulation and often did - no matter what damage she inflicted on others.

At the start of the miniseries, we see Holmes as a child on an athletics track lagging behind others in a race but refusing to throw in the towel.

This opening image is the perfect visual metaphor for Holmes' stubbornness in the face of failure - a trait which would prove so costly to others later in life.

Not long afterwards we see her father, Michel Gill's Chris Holmes suffer the humiliation of losing his job at Enron.

His disappointment acts as a spur for Elizabeth to be her own boss.

At the behest of his wife Elizabeth Marvel's Noel, Chris's toes curl as the family goes to see the husband of a friend of her's, Mary Lynn Rajskub's Lorraine Fuisz for financial help.

William H Macy's Richard Fuisz is an arrogant businessman who enjoys having his ego massaged as the Holmes ask for money.

Elizabeth, however, takes an instant dislike to him, getting under his skin.

Later as she watches her father break down in his study, she resolves never to be that desperate.

While in college, Elizabeth goes to China to learn Mandarin on an immersion course and meets Naveen Andrews' mature student from Berkeley, Sunny Balwani.

Sunny is 19 years older than her and has already sold a software company for $40 million.

Born in Pakistan into a well to do Hindu family, she is immediately drawn to the chemical engineering student from Stanford and he becomes a mentor, close confidante and eventually her lover.

This is hardly surprising for a woman idolises Steve Jobs and is clearly looking for someone like him to be her guiding light.

With her focus on learning Mandarin and her drive to become an inventor, Elizabeth is regarded as a bit of an oddity by her fellow students.

Bitten by the bug of becoming an entrepreneur, she lobbies Bill Irwin's Professor Channing Robertson to allow her to be on his research team despite being an undergraduate.

After spotting a flaw in his research, she secures a place on his team and soon pitches an idea to him of a patch which people could use in their homes to diagnose conditions and work out the right medical treatment.

Impressed by her determination and intrigued by her idea, he sends her to Laurie Metcalf's celebrated physician Phyllis Gardner who shoots down the concept and tells her to stop running before she can walk.

Phyllis urges Elizabeth to just enjoy her college years and start acting like a 19 year old instead of trying to change the world before she has truly experienced it.

Elizabeth's attempt to loosen up at a party in Stanford, however, goes badly and she reports a sexual assault to the college authorities.

Howrver her complaint goes nowhere.

Dropping out of university much to her parents' consternation, she comes up with the idea of a diagnostic blood testing machine and assembles a team around her to deliver it.

Among those she recruits are Stephen Fry's genteel English biochemist Ian Gibbons who lectures at Stanford and two engineers, James Hiroyuki Liao's Edmund Ku and Utkarsh Ambdukar's Rakesh Madhava.

Professor Robertson is also cajoled into advising on the project but it needs investment.

Thoroughly researching potential investors, Elizabeth charms and wangles seed money out of Michael Ironside's Stetson wearing business tycoon Don Lucas.

With Sunny also encouraging her, she charms Sam Waterston's economist and former US Secretary of State, George Shultz into joining her board as the company starts to grow.

She also talks Nicky Endres' Ana Ariola into leaving Apple and becoming the chief design architect of her project.

She and Sunny woo Alan Ruck's Walgreens executive Jay Rosan in a bid to have her company, Theranos' brand exclusively in their stores.

The only problem is Theranos doesn't have a product that works.

Its prototypes repeatedly fail during testing and as a result she is effectively selling people the idea of a diagnostic machine without coming up with the goods.

Rather than admit Theranos' models are a failure, Holmes has her team fake their test results to secure funding.

And as the company grows with Sunny appointed as Chief Operating Officer, their deception deepens and so does their paranoia about being caught.

While the duo pursue money and Elizabeth courts fame as a visionary, young female entrepreneur, some people inside and outside the company suspect it's all bullshit.

Richard Fuisz and Phyllis Gardner, in particular, team up to expose Elizabeth and Sunny as a pair of charlatans.

Whistleblowers also emerge within the company like George Shultz's grandson, Dylan Minnette's Tyler and Camryn Mi-Young Kim's Erika Cheung.

However they have a struggle convincing others, including Tyler's grandfather, about the fraud that is being perpetuated at Theranos.

A lot of people are duped and their willingness to believe Sunny and Elizabeth means the duo leave a trail of destruction in their wake.

Careers are destroyed, families are wrecked and they even go through the motions of carrying out fake diagnostic tests on cancer patients.

With the company failing to produce a single workable prototype and producing fantasy results, when will the bubble burst?

With episodes written by Merriwether, Matt Lutsky, Hilary Bettis, Dan LeFranc, Liz Hannah, Wei-Ning Yu and Liz Heidens, 'The Dropout' is one of the standout TV dramas of 2022.

Set in the not so distant past, it skewers Western capitalism's obsession with image as opposed to reality.

The show flags up the dangers of bigging up business gurus and entrepreneurs who are good at talking the talk but have no real record of substance.

Some viewers will be shocked to discover that Holmes managed to talk her way into the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows.

But she also figured in Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, Forbes' list of the 100 most powerful women, received an honorary degree from Pepperdine University and became the youngest recipient of the Horatio Alger Award for Distinguished Americans.

Theranos received investment from business titans like Rupert Murdoch, the DeVos' family, the Walton family and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper.

It drew the likes of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of Defense William Perry and future Secretary of Defense, James Mattis onto its board.

To capture the shocking nature of all of this, smart casting is essential and 'The Dropout' doesn't get a single choice wrong.

Origibally Kate McKinnon was earmarked for the role of Holmes.

However her decision to stand aside for the casting of Seyfried proves a wise one.

Seyfried carries off Holmes' unshakable self-belief and egomania very convincingly in what is unquestionably a career best performance.

As this blog has often pointed out, great acting is often all about the eyes.

It's about those fleeting expressions that say an awful lot about what a character is thinking without ever having to vocalise those thoughts.

Seyfried does this very well, conveying eagerness, fierce determination, ruthlessness and fear very effectively at various stages of the show.

Andrews is excellent too as Sunny, her all too willing mentor, lover and partner in crime.

While you buy into his devotion to Elizabeth, you also don't doubt for one minute his instinct to save his own skin if the going gets tough.

The cast are uniformly excellent from Marvel and Gill as Holmes' supportive and proud parents to Macy as the prickly, egocentric Fuisz and Metcalf as the sceptical and easily outraged Gardner.

Stephen Fry is hugely sympathetic ax the mild mannered Gibbons in a career best performance too.

Hiroyuki Liao, Ambdukar and Endres do a terrific job conveying the unease of Theranos employees as they realise Elizabeth and Sunny are not all they are cracked up to be.

Waterston is wonderfully pompous as George Shultz, as is Ironside as the equally deluded Lucas and Alan Ruck as the Walgreens executive who fears missing out on the next big thing.

Minnette and Mi-Young Kim are convincing as whistleblowers on the lowest rung of the Theranos ladder, while Anne Archer is perfectly cast as George Shultz's wife Charlotte who becomes increasingly dismayed by his refusal to listen to or value his grandson.

In this era of social media influencers, TV news stations that present one sided fantasy as reality and politicians with no track record apart from a propensity to spout inflammatory but ultimately empty slogans, 'The Dropout' is a warning about people buying into image as opposed to real substance.

Mainstream and social media hype is all well and good but if there is nothing to back it up, it can have catastrophic consequences.

'The Dropout' is essentially about two people who could talk a big game and prospered despite not actually delivering much.

It also doesn't flinch in showing the devastating consequences of people swallowing their lies.

It is a compelling watch.

But viewing it you wonder how many other dramas will we see in years to come about similar grifters in business, in politics and the media before the penny finally drops?

Real achievement should matter. Substance should matter. Facts should matter.

Denying reality helps no-one. Admitting failure, learning from it and moving on is the right thing to do whether in science and innovation, politics, the arts, sport and the media.

Lying about election results or whether diagnostic machines are working, is not just immoral, it is reckless and corrosive.

Those who buy into the lies of narcissists often end up paying the heaviest price.

And this is particularly clear in the story of Holmes.

('The Dropout' was made available for streaming on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland on March 3, 2022)

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CHASING UNICORNS (THE DROPOUT)

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