Review: 'The Audacity' makes it hard to find anyone (or anything) to root for in Silicon Valley

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Anyone who has spent any time in the digital agora will know the chilling feeling of seeing some supposedly secret thing about yourself suddenly reflected in a targeted advertisement.In a new Silicon Valley soap, “The Audacity,” Duncan (Billy Magnussen) founds a company called PINATA, for Privacy Is Not a Thing Anymore, which will allow subscribers to snoop at a deep level on just about anyone in the world; the war against the data eaters, the name suggests, is long since lost, and is none of your business, anyway.Created by Jonathan Glatzer, who has written for “Succession” and “Better Call Saul,” the series premieres Sunday on AMC, the network of “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men” and an earlier tech-related series, “Halt and Catch Fire,” about the rise of the personal computer — shows that focus on difficult, sometimes amoral characters whose shenanigans might change the world, not necessarily for the better.

“The Audacity,” though well made enough, is not in their league.Duncan made his fortune as a co-founder of a community app something along the lines of Facebook (which, along with Mark Zuckerberg, doesn’t exist in this silicon reality — “If only,” do I hear you sigh? Or was that me?) Now he’s trying to sell his information-gathering startup to “Cupertino” (as in the home of Apple), “the most important tech company to ever exist,” and leaking rumors he imagines will be to his advantage.Duncan is not himself a creator, or particularly smart — he thinks it’s “Schroeder’s Cat,” for example — but does have a gift for selling; his “genius” late partner, Hamish — who died by suicide — did the real work.

Now a new Hamish enters his life in the form of Harper (Jess McLeod, whose blond bob may remind viewers of the brilliant coder played by Mackenzie Davis on “Halt and Catch Fire”), the creator of the “algo” menti...