From the very first scene of US comedy drama, House of Lies, you get to see a lot of Don Cheadle. That's true of the whole first season, which is almost a one-man show. So, the success of it depends to a very large extent on the likeability of his Marty Kaan and the quality of his performance. Thankfully both hit the mark. Kaan is a management consultant who is ruthless, borderline reckless and, not unusually for a modern show, the keeper of a broken and chaotic home life. But he is very good at what he does and his ego swells with each episode's success. The show has faults -- many of the set-ups are somewhat cliched; the ex-wife who is also a business rival; the wiser-than-his-years troubled kid -- and the secondary characters are a little two-dimensional. As a consequence, the show falls short of its aim of being a biting and cutting-edge satire but, helped by the freedom that comes with being broadcast on pay TV in the US, it attacks its subject with an abandon that makes each 30-minute serving tremendous fun to watch.--Julian Hardy