‘Traders’ Pumps Up The Adrenalin With Some High-Stakes Drama
One of the best new series of the fall season won’t be found on the Must-See, Welcome Home or Dubba-Dubba lineups, nor, for that matter, on any broadcast outlet.
Nor, strictly speaking, is it even new. Canadians were introduced to this Toronto-produced treat a year ago and are now enjoying its second season.
Still, “Traders,” a crafty melodrama about - of all unlikely things - investment bankers, is an hour well-spent by any viewer tired of the same old TV business.
One important reason: Patrick McKenna stealing scenes as Marty Stephens, the bullying, bellowing head trader who’s as volatile as the market he finesses.
“There are people from Bay Street who do what Marty does for a living who are intimidated to meet me on the set,” McKenna says with ample satisfaction. “I scare them - and they’re the ones who really scare people for a living!”
The Lifetime cable network televises “Traders” each Sunday at 7 p.m. and then repeats that installment the following Saturday at 10 p.m.
The action centers on Gardner-Ross, an independent Toronto investment house whose senior partner, Cedric Ross, was arrested as the series began in connection with a vanished $5 million. Stepping into her father’s shoes as the new senior partner, Sally Ross, an outsider, is determined to retain the firm’s independence and to prove her mettle to the skeptics who surround her.
By the show’s own reckoning, “Traders” exalts in “the lives and loves, the mystique and machinations of investment bankers whose high-stakes decisions and sizzling alliances can have substantial consequences.” Think 80 percent “L.A. Law” and 20 percent “Dynasty.”
Much of the excitement takes place down in the “pit,” with stock quotations ribboning across the wall and phones ringing and Marty Stephens badgering his traders to squeeze another deal out of their terminals.
Maybe you don’t know exactly what’s happening, but you know it matters big time. Like the life-and-death surgery you can’t quite fathom on “ER,” these trading sequences are fast-paced, compellingly staged and put your pulse into overdrive.
“People say to me, ‘You’ve never been on a stock exchange floor. How do you nail this character so well?’ Because he’s a manager, a coach,” McKenna explains. “Managers have to know how to push the buttons of their employees. Marty does.
“That’s one reason people are plugged into the show. They say, ‘I don’t understand money.’
“But ‘Traders’ isn’t about that. It’s about people, about gamesmanship. The backdrop just happens to be money.”
Chatting during a day trip to Manhattan not long ago, McKenna looks downright natty, rather calm, his smile nondemonic. It’s quite a departure from his rumpled, wild-eyed Marty.