Watch Julia Ormond and Ben Barnes in the Trailer for 'Gold Digger'
Gold Digger ( Working Title )
The new Acorn TV series Gold Digger trailer promises a messy, scandalous thriller in which Julia Ormond finds herself romantically involved with a much younger Ben Barnes, who may or may not be after much more than just her affection.
As the title suggests, much of this series will be focused on a May-December romance. This trope probably wouldn't be considered shocking if the relationship in question were between a much older man and a younger woman. After all, we see that every day - it's generally just seen as a thing that happens, mainly if the man in question is wealthy or influential. It's expected. Men are allowed to trade on their power or wealth in this way. But women? Not so much.
Ormond stars as Julia Day, a sixty-year-old recently divorced woman who's feeling increasingly unsure of her place in the world - lonely and detached from her three grown-up children. When she falls in love with thirty-five-year-old Benjamin Green, she feels he represents a second chance at a meaningful companion and partner. Her family disagrees, however. Both her children and her ex-husband suspect Benjamin of ulterior motives, citing his low-end job and shady past as reasons he's untrustworthy. Their subsequent clashes over Julia's new relationship will strain their dysfunctional family, even as it pushes them all to confront their own demons.
Whether Julia and Benjamin's relationship is legitimate is ostensibly the linchpin around which this twisty tale turns. And there are certainly questions enough about his motivations and past. But this is also inevitably a story about how we, as viewers, react to this sort of strident declaration of older female sexuality. Do we immediately suspect Benjamin of nefarious motives because there's just no way a thirty-year-old man would want to be with a woman thirty years his senior?
"What attracted me to the story is how it's provocative and challenges us in terms of how we see women who have devoted their lives to motherhood - and what they do when that phase is coming to an end," Ormond said in a statement. "To Julia’s children, there is a sense that Benjamin is a threat to their inheritance and a feeling that there is something off about him, but it’s founded in this disbelief that he could genuinely love her. So each episode unpacks this, looking at the preconceived ideas about how women should be with men. Even though we’re very used to seeing older men with much younger women, to see the reverse throws into sharp relief our societal expectations of women.”
Watch the trailer for yourselves below.
The six-episode series will premiere on Acorn TV on Monday, May 4, with two episodes. Additional two-episode blocks will stream each Monday over the following two weeks.
Thoughts on this premise? Does Gold Digger look like something you'd watch? Let's discuss this in the comments.
