The second season of the French comedy series “Family Business” is available on the Irish Netflix catalogue, and the good surprise is the original Netflix series keeps the same quirky, witty and irreverent humour that made it a hit in 2019. In the first season launched in 2019, “Family Business” introduces to us the saga of the Hazans’ family, a Jewish French family that runs a kosher butcher shop which struggles to survive in the contemporary world. They are going through bankruptcy, with piling debts and repossession looming in the not-so-distant future. Joseph is determined to save his family, but he doesn’t want to follow his father’s footstep, who expects him to take over the butcher shop.
Joseph has the ambition of becoming an entrepreneur, and has created his own software application company. However, he fails to get sponsorship for it. Later on, with marijuana legalisation on the horizon in France, Joseph has a spark of genius and decides to turn the Butchers into a weed store. From here, it doesn’t take long before Joseph, supported by his inseparable mates Oliver and Ali, convinces his sister Aure, his grandmother Ludmila and his father Gérard to ‘depart into his dangerous adventure’.
During the six episodes, we see the Hazan family’s ups and downs to manage their illegal business, such as escaping from cops through deceit, running from mafia members, and towards the end, they find themselves in trouble as the French government decides not to legalise Marijuana after all, meaning their whole effort, risks, and investments they had gone through, all came crashing down. At the end of the series, they faced a criminal mafia led by Jaures that force them to produce their lucrative weed plantations to her gang.
In the second season, Joseph has a new dilemma. If in the first season he had the conflict of bringing his traditional family into the illegal business, now he wants to get them away from it – even if the business is booming. The reason for that has name: his adorable girlfriend/spouse Aida, who gave birth to triplet babies. She disapproves Joseph’s family business and this time she threatens him: if he doesn’t quit, he won’t see her and his kids anymore. So, he decides to quit his business, but he doesn’t know how considering his family is settled into it, and he starts planning how to convince his family to leave too.
Jo tells Jaures they will leave the business, but she says that he must have a death wish if he thinks he’s quitting. He makes a counter-offer though — the recipe for the weed. He explains the vast majority of the weed production is handled by Ludmila, his granny. That’s a bit risky for business. She agrees, that she’ll let them all walk away if she can make the weed on her own. So, she sends her best botanist over so his grandmother can teach the recipe. Of course, his idea doesn’t work and from this point, we follow Joseph’s conflicted journey getting more delicate, dangerous and exciting!
The creator of Family Business, Igor Gotesman does very well to keep things lighthearted whilst adding some dramatic spice to the show, keeping it from falling into a silly comedy or just silly slapstick humour, and surprising plot twists that turn the story upside down.
For instance, he brings some themes, with family grief, addiction, marriage issues, acceptance, and moving on forming the crux of this.
The series shows new dramatic arcs such as Gérard going to a rehabilitation clinic to stop smoking weed, but he keeps secretly doing so. He also copes with Catherine, a member of rehab who has a romantic interest in him, but he doesn’t feel ready for romance just yet. Jo’s grandmother Ludmila suffers a stroke and the members of the family are faced with death once again. Aure has to deal with the crisis in her relationship with the cop Élodie, who wants to be introduced to Aure’s family, who don’t know that Aure has been in a relationship with her. Aure gives excuses that her father is a homophobe. Joseph’s woes cast doubt over his talents of being an entrepreneur while he keeps straining his relationship with his father and Aida.
The series has creative plot points which keep the series captivating, for instance, Jaures storyline which takes to the main conflict of the season, and at the end, Catherine’s surprising plot twist that leads the series into it’s potential third season.
“Family Business” season 2 is certainly a great new comedy series. It doesn’t have the pretentiousness of being over intellectual, or claiming to change the world or anything like that. The series is ideal entertainment for someone who wants to have the craic while watching a lighthearted series, with a good balance of irreverent comedy and affecting drama.
Check out the official trailer below:
If you have any suggestion or complaint, please feel free to send an email to me at info.audiovisualmaniacclub@gmail.com
