# Trust (2018)

> A dramatized account of the 1973 kidnapping of oil heir J. Paul Getty III by the Italian mafia, and the miserly family patriarch who refuses to pay.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/65993

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 10
- Episode runtime: 52 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: crime, drama
- Created by: Simon Beaufoy
- Network: FX
- Cast: Donald Sutherland, Hilary Swank, Harris Dickinson, Michael Esper, Brendan Fraser, Luca Marinelli, Anna Chancellor, Francesco Colella
- TMDB rating: 7.5/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5664952/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: harrowing, tense, claustrophobic, cold, darkly witty

## What critics say

Audiences rate the series positively, with praise for its dramatization of the Getty kidnapping and its performances.

## Synopsis

Trust (2018) is a US-British crime drama limited series created by Simon Beaufoy for FX. Donald Sutherland plays the miserly oil magnate J. Paul Getty Sr., whose refusal to pay a ransom sets the story in motion, while Harris Dickinson plays his grandson J. Paul Getty III, the heir abducted in Rome by the Italian mafia. Hilary Swank portrays Gail Getty, the former wife who fights to rescue her son, and Brendan Fraser plays the negotiator James Fletcher Chace, caught between the family and the kidnappers. The engine of the show is a brutal standoff: the captors demand a ransom, the patriarch stalls, and every episode tightens the pressure on a boy held in filthy captivity while the family's fortune and loyalties crack under the strain. Set in 1970s Rome and Los Angeles, the story unfolds with the grim textures of the period, mixing tense hostage drama with the cold, venal atmosphere of inherited money. Its tone is harrowing and claustrophobic, with flashes of dark wit in the family's cruelty. Fans of Succession, All the Money in the World and Chernobyl will find resonance in its true-events prestige storytelling and portrait of wealth gone rotten. The series has a single season of ten episodes and is presented as a complete story, though it was originally planned to span multiple seasons across the twentieth century.

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