Capital City (TV series)

rdf:langString Capital City (TV series)

rdf:langString Declan is having a dinner party for Max, Michelle and Sophie – an art dealer who likes Max and whom Max, for his part, seems to like as well until he discovers she used to use drugs and, he feels, might start using again. Max, though, seems far more interested in a potential deal, making a killing in some bonds by selling now while the price is high and buying back once the price has fallen. Jimmy and Chas fall out after Jimmy sexually assaults Louise, a 17-year-old runaway, following a night of partying.

rdf:langString Michelle and her new assistant, Hilary, are puzzled by a client who balks at making a profit, and Max is surprised to find that Sylvia – the new Head Trader – believes that his job is not essential to the Bank.

rdf:langString Lee Wolf travels to Prague to complete a multi-million dollar deal but his acquiescence in a colleague's questionable arrangements gets him into difficulty.

rdf:langString Wendy is promoted to become the new Head of Derivatives and is replaced as Chief Trader on the floor by the hard-boiled Sylvia Roux Teng. Sirkka gets a wake-up call and decides to join Alcoholics Anonymous. Jimmy Destry is sacked for malpractice after Declan discovers his off-market trades.

rdf:langString The beautiful Claudine – an old friend of Declan's – persuades him into a deal he soon regrets. Michelle is unsympathetic as he gets into more and more difficulty, but the Bank softball match gives her the chance to help him out.

rdf:langString Jimmy Destry meets journalist Sarah Douglas at a private party, Not realising her profession, he divulges potentially damaging information about his colleagues and the departure of Ralph Goldring, Shane Longman's former Finance Director. The article is later published in the London Evening Post and includes unfavourable references to team members including a "Scandinavian cow", which Sirkka believes is her. It is later revealed that Max and Sarah were once lovers.

rdf:langString It's Friday evening. The market is winding down. Sirkka is flying to Copenhagen for the weekend to see her boyfriend, Sven, and is about to leave when she hears that Aristotle has dropped out of an important deal she has set up. She must find another player fast as the deal has to be in place by Monday morning. Sirkka confronts Aristotle in a nearby bar and ends up with a black eye.

rdf:langString A dawn raid has occurred and Friedmans, a rival bank, has acquired 15 per cent of Shane Longman's shares. A takeover is threatened and the dealers' jobs are suddenly at stake. Chief Executive James Farrell tries to contact Peter Longman, the bank's major shareholder, only to discover that he is fishing somewhere off the north-west coast of Tahiti and cannot be reached. But a young accountant doing an audit at Shane lets slip to Chas and Declan that things at the rival bank are not what they seem.

rdf:langString Contrary to the image he projects at the Bank, Lee Wolf is a gambler and an unlucky one. His debts put his job and his personal life in jeopardy. He has to pull off something big to survive. While things get worse for Wolf, however, they get better for Declan and Michelle, who have a big decision to make.

rdf:langString Declan and Michelle are having a difficult time. Declan wonders whether things would be better if they did not work together. As it happens, he is approached by another bank but he is unsure why.

rdf:langString Hudson unwillingly introduces his friend, Danny, to the trading floor. Danny is an expert in chaos theory, and starts giving good advice. Sylvia is impressed and thinks Danny should be part of the team. Michelle and Hilary get involved with a deal for an attractive tycoon. For Michelle, it's just business, but Hilary hopes it might be more.

rdf:langString Leonard has spent a year wooing back a major client, the Municipal Pension Fund, and he assigns the job of advising them to Declan, the bank's senior dealer. Unforeseen problems threaten the deal that Declan is setting up for the bank thanks to Jimmy, a junior dealer.

rdf:langString Peter Longman is in ebullient spirits. As Shane Longman's major shareholder, he has secured a deal with Tokyo-based Ikeda Bank to set up a joint venture. The signing of the agreement between the two banks is to be widely covered by the City press. Leonard Ansen is not so enthusiastic and believes Longman has rushed into the deal too quickly without considering the long-term implications of the tie-up. Ikeda executives give some indication of their desire to eventually take over Shane Longman but walk away from the deal after being less than impressed by what they perceived as a lack of discipline in the dealing room.

rdf:langString A serious problem looms at Shane Longman. Leonard Ansen, the Senior Director of Banking Activities, and Wendy's closest ally on the top floor, is in trouble with the DTI. He is suspected of insider trading and is forced to inform the board of his situation. Lee Wolf, the Director of Corporate Finance, and Ralph Goldring, the Director of Finance, demand Leonard's resignation; however, when CEO James Farrell and major shareholder Peter Longman put their support behind Leonard, it is Ralph Goldring who is forced out.

rdf:langString Whilst finalising an awkward deal in Warsaw, Max becomes very taken by Maxine, who works in an art gallery. Meanwhile, Sirkka hits rock bottom when she collapses with alcoholic poisoning and is rushed to hospital.

rdf:langString Sylvia saddles Hilary and Chas with an unsaleable issue and won't accept that the problem has been caused by her. Hilary's attempts to sort things out are complicated by the fact that everyone at the Bank is off to the wedding of the year.

rdf:langString Hudson is embroiled in a difficult issue. The childminder has left and Hudson's mother – visiting from the United States – is standing in and looking after his son. Inevitably there's friction. Sirkka finds that she has to look closely at her relationship with her friend, Yolande.

rdf:langString Hudson Talbot, Shane Longman's capital markets originator, is woken in the middle of the night by his colleague, Max Lubin, the Bank's Director of Swaps. Hudson is persuaded, reluctantly, to discuss what sounds like another of Max's unorthodox but possibly brilliant schemes.

rdf:langString Eyebrows are raised when Max employs astrology to predict major deals. Thrill-seeking Sirkka enters dangerous territory when she becomes a high-class prostitute and discovers that risk isn't confined to the dealing room floor.

rdf:langString Hilary's job is threatened when Sylvia tries to convince the Bank's executives that they need staff cuts. The deal which might save her looks like it's going wrong. Sirkka faces a personal trauma on her own.

rdf:langString Max and Hudson have completed a deal with the Pan Mediterranean Fund, an EEC entity which offers finance to the poorer areas of Europe. Jerome Heron is a difficult character but his deputy, Monique Danvier, is far more likeable.

rdf:langString Charles Jennings

rdf:langString Andrew Maclear

rdf:langString Matthew Bardsley

rdf:langString Richard O'Keefe

rdf:langString Tom Greenwood

rdf:langString Euston Films for Thames

rdf:langString United Kingdom

rdf:langString Drama

rdf:langString English

rdf:langString William Armstrong

rdf:langString Anna Nygh

rdf:langString Saira Todd

rdf:langString Headhunting

rdf:langString Thanksgiving

rdf:langString Rainforest

rdf:langString Takeover

rdf:langString The Wedding

rdf:langString A Wolf in Wolf's Clothing

rdf:langString Capital City

rdf:langString Ethical Investments

rdf:langString Hard Drugs and Snails

rdf:langString Insider Trading

rdf:langString Japanese Fund

rdf:langString Max in Poland

rdf:langString Max in Space

rdf:langString Max in Trouble

rdf:langString Newspaper Story

rdf:langString Pension Fund

rdf:langString Shoes on the Wrong Foot

rdf:langString Strange Attractions

rdf:langString Strange Fruits

rdf:langString Swami's in Town

rdf:langString The Gnome From Zurich

rdf:langString Twelve Degrees Capricorn

rdf:langString Capital City is a television series which focused on the professional and personal lives of a group of investment bankers working in the dealing room at Shane Longman, a fictional international bank based in the City of London. The 23-episode series was produced by Euston Films, a wholly owned subsidiary of Thames Television, for the ITV network. Thames Television spent an estimated £500,000 to run newspaper and billboard advertisements to promote the series' launch which at the time was believed to be the largest advertising spend for a programme in the history of ITV. Full-page advertisements were taken in six national newspapers including The Financial Times, The Times and The Independent. The ads promoted the Shane Longman "brand", rather than "Capital City", and featured images of cast members in character. Thames Television stated that the press and poster ads were considered necessary to raise the profile of the series amongst members of the public who had a specialised or more professional interest, however a number of City bankers described the series as "fairly inaccurate", "confusing for the ordinary viewer", and lacking solid research. One television critic stated: "All of this would have been quite novel and exciting three years ago, but the world has turned, the market has crashed and we have all seen enough of other people's Porsches to last a lifetime... City hustlers do not look very heroic any more, just extravagantly paid." Still, it could be argued that most of the characters in "Capital City" – perhaps with the exception of the reckless and predatory Jimmy Destry, power-hungry Lee Wolf and the duplicitous Sylvia Roux Teng – portray City bankers in a generally positive manner. The primary characters come across as likeable and – in contrast to the Gordon Gekko "greed is good" stereotype often associated with their industry – as possessing a moral and/or social conscience; in one episode, the entire dealing room threatens to go on strike in protest against handling a bond issue on behalf of a company which dumps toxic waste in poor African countries and demand that Shane Longman introduce policies which enable them to avoid dealing with clients who they regard as unethical. Capital City is very much a product of the late 1980s, on the cusp of the digital revolution. The dealing room computers used what appeared to be a DOS operating system; mobile phones were the size of bricks; the primary methods of long-distance "instant" communication were still the land line telephone, fax and telex; and smoking – banned in England, within most public buildings, in 2007 – was still allowed in the workplace as well as inside restaurants, bars and other public places. At the same time, the series dealt with several mature storylines including alcoholism, depression, mental illness, sexual assault, drug use, homosexuality, physical assault, gambling addiction, prostitution, promiscuity, shoplifting, fraud, bribery, corruption and abortion.

rdf:langString Robert Walker

rdf:langString Clive Fleury

rdf:langString Sarah Hellings

rdf:langString Diarmuid Lawrence

rdf:langString Mike Vardy