Advertisement

Made For Love on Stan is a great argument NOT to date billionaires

Streamer: Stan

Length: 10 x episodes (25-29 minutes each)

Score: 3/5

You know what must be super weird? Dating a tech billionaire. Your Mark Zuckerbergs, Elon Musks, or secondhand Lex Luthor figurine, Jeff Bezos. Anyone with enough in the bank to pop out for a croissant brekkie in Paris and be back in time for a Kiwi Pie dessert in New Zealand and not think about it twice.

How strange must be the priorities of a bloke who can fang a sports car into space for the lulz? What on earth would it be like to hook up with such a being?

Well, if Made For Love is to be believed, the experience is pretty bloody far from ideal!

Has Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti) in Made For Love
Has Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti) had a big night on the turps or dated a tech billionaire? Watch Made For Love to find out. Picture: Stan

Made For Love is a (very) black comedy about Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti), a young woman who makes the unfortunate mistake of going on a date with tech billionaire, and dead-eyed sociopath, Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen).

The date ends in marriage (oof) and over ten years (double off) Hazel becomes more and more cut off and disconnected from the rest of society, including her friends and dad Herbert (Ray Romano).

RELATED:

Eventually, Hazel has had enough. She finally escapes her brilliant, but deranged, beau. Just one problem: Byron has chipped her brain with his invasive new tech and can see through her eyes, knowing where she is, who she’s with and even what she’s feeling.

Byron’s a madman with near limitless resources and all the time in the world. And he will never, ever let Hazel go.

Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti) tamps down her horror as Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen) launches into his cover of WAP. Picture: Stan
Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti) tamps down her horror as Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen) launches into his cover of WAP in Made For Love. Picture: Stan

If all of the above sounds like the premise for a horror movie, you’re not wrong. In fact it’s almost beat for beat the plot of Leigh Whannell’s excellent reboot of The Invisible Man from 2020.

Where Made For Love keeps its head above the grimness inherent in the premise, is with Cristin Milioti’s superb comic timing. Other than being woefully wasted in How I Met Your Mother (as the titular mother, no less), Milioti shines in everything she does.

She’s at turns lost, enraged, triumphant and tragic, and you’ll be rooting for her the whole time.

Props should also go to Ray Romano, who plays an affable former alcoholic who is in a relationship with a synthetic woman (aka a sex doll), and really does try his best, even though it’s never close to good enough.

Herbert Green (Ray Romano) brings a lot of heart, and his
Herbert Green (Ray Romano) brings a lot of heart, and his "synthetic partner" Diane (a sex doll), to Made For Love. Picture: Stan

Less successful is Billy Magnussen, who plays Byron as such an insufferable wanker, it’s genuinely difficult to understand what Hazel ever saw in him.

Made For Love also somewhat squanders the technology part of its premise, hand waving away most of that potentially interesting aspect in favour of comic moments, most of which land well enough.

This is a show that deals in wry, knowing chuckles and bleak observations rather than fulsome belly laughs.

Still, despite these shortcomings Made For Love is compelling enough telly with a spectacular lead performance and a premise that walks the line between confronting and absurd.

And while it may not entirely deliver the accurate experience of dating a tech billionaire, you might just think twice before swiping right on one of those types in the future.

Never miss a thing. Sign up to Yahoo Lifestyle’s daily newsletter.

Or if you have a story idea, email us at lifestyle.tips@verizonmedia.com.