Byrde On A Wire:Ozark S2.

"Live every day like it's the last day of your life. One day you'll be right" - Frank Sinatra.

I'm not in the business of spoilers but, bearing in mind the nature of the drama, it'll probably not come as much of a surprise to read that not every character who was still alive at the end of the first season of Netflix's Ozark makes it to the end of the second series.

I won't tell you who those people are but the number is certainly more than one. Characters are not the only thing to fall by the wayside during Ozark season two. Some of the tight plotting, the character development, and even the addictive nature of the story seemed to depreciate somewhat as the ten episodes dragged on. If I hadn't read about a vast improvement in the, not yet watched by me, third season I'd have been tempted to kick the habit entirely.

Or at least find a new dealer (my friend Adam gave up on it and turned to Money Heist for his kicks). The action picks up almost exactly where season one ended, as you were, but with Ruth's (Julia Langmore) dad, Cade (Trevor Long) out of prison and stirring up trouble for his own family as well as others and power struggles being played out between the Byrdes and the Snells.

Power struggles not just between the families but within the families. Possibly the most pronounced tonal shift in the second series is in the way the southern gothic drama of earlier episodes gives way to deeper psychological mood swings as we question who really holds the reins of power, who is really the driver in these personal and professional relationships.

With almost every scene shot in muted tones, as if Missouri is permanently at dusk, or even in the dark we question if Wendy (Laura Linney) has been more than simply complicit in Marty's (Jason Bateman) plans than it first seened, if Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery) is capable of far darker acts than husband Jacob (Peter Mullan), and if Ruth and Rachel (Jordana Spiro) are far more important, and wily, players than initial evidence suggested.

The story revolves around Marty's attempt to deliver a casino to the Lake of the Ozarks to launder his ill-gotten drug money but what's more interesting than the extortion of corrupt senators, the quid pro quo deals, the indecent proposals, the inevitable lapses into recidivism, and the double crossing is the way the drama looks into how people rationalise, or post-rationalise, their actions and the violence and hurt their actions lead to.

There's some enjoyable anti-capitalist sentiment, some stunning streamline moderne speedboats to admire, and some amusing lines - "I wouldn't fuck you if your dick was made of gold", but some of the set pieces seem to have been designed to forward the tension rather than the narrative and, in some cases, it just seems to be an excuse for a bit of gross out humour.

Which doesn't sit well with the overall mood of the piece. In season one we could enjoy Sam (Kevin L Johnson) getting a dog to lick peanut butter off his dick and in season two the producers have upped the ante by having characters masturbate over the recorded voices of the Snells and the Byrdes (while, at the same time, providing useful storyline direction - a wanker's take on sexposition) and paying prostitutes to wear prosthetic cocks which they then suck while dressed in ladies knickers.

It can go a bit In Bruges at times. As if the creators of the show imagined a particularly lurid scene and then rewrote the story so that it arrived there. Some minor characters seem to have been incorporated into the action simply to aid these scenes and Ruth starts to be played more as a pastiche of herself in a way that reminded me of how the Villanelle of series two of Killing Eve was faintly ludicrous even in comparison to the larger than life Villanelle of that show's first series.

Take nothing away from the actors. Bateman, Linney, Sofia Hublitz (who as Charlotte seeks her 'emancipation' in this season), and Skylar Gaertner's Jonah are great as the Byrde family, Mullan and Emery ooze menace as the Mullans, Charlie Tahan (as Wyatt Langmore) comes into his own as a surprisingly literary hillbilly eager to escape the bind of his family, and Janet McTeer's Helen Pierce is a worthwhile addition to the cast as a no-nonsense Chicago attorney unafraid of sanctioning extreme violence in favour of her clients in the Navarro cartel.

Agent Roy Petty (Jason Butler Harner) remains as brilliantly ridiculous as he's always been and as he begins to close in on the Byrdes from all sides by compromising many of the most corrupt players we start to see what direction the show may follow in season three. But, for me, it would need to lose a bit of the sub-Breaking Bad vibe, answer some of the questions that have been asked but left hanging (especially regarding Rachel's character), and perhaps ditch a few characters.

Michael Mosley's Pastor Mason Young has gone from preaching in a boat to preaching in a church to preaching in the street to enacting his own personal vengeance on those he feels have betrayed him and the arc of his story seems to have been drawn to tell the tale of the Byrdes rather than his own. He does, at least, provide Wendy with an opportunity to show a minor pang of conscience before it's all hands to the tiller for another cruise into crime.

Ozark season two is great at showing how organised crime has infiltrated both politics and the gaming industry and it's brilliant at illustrating how interconnected everybody is in this infiltration. From the professional criminals to the low level crooks and on to the FBI and the local law enforcement officers. There are funny and moving scenes, not least Jonah's oration at a funeral which manages to skilfully hit both of those marks, but there is too much slack for it to be truly gripping.

The soundtrack is fantastic (Notorious B.I.G., Johnny 'Guitar' Watson, Glen Campbell, Amy Winehouse, Marvin Gaye, Townes Van Zandt's Waiting Around To Die, and Dion And The Del-Satin's amazing Drip Drop) but it does a bit too much of the heavy lifting. I'm giving season two the benefit of the doubt and hoping that some of the longueurs I experienced staring at dusky Missouri lake scenes will pay off in the third season but, as with the product offered by the Snells, I'll just have to dose up and see if I have a good trip or a bad trip.