Netflix’s ‘Tokyo Swindlers’ is this summer’s guiltiest pleasure

It’s like the bubble era all over again. The year is 2017, and the upcoming Olympic Games has sent Tokyo’s real estate market into a frenzy.

“This is war,” a stressed-out property developer (Koji Yamamoto) tells his subordinates, as they scramble to find an alternative plot for a blockbuster project that’s just fallen through. “Compliance be damned!” Little does he realize, he’s about to lead his company into a multibillion-yen property scam orchestrated by a notorious fraudster with the unlikely name of Harrison Yamanaka (Etsushi Toyokawa).

During the opening episode of “Tokyo Swindlers” — Hitoshi One’s flashy, trashy and gloriously entertaining Netflix series — Harrison sets his sights on “a job so big, there’ll be dead bodies everywhere” by the time he’s finished. Coming from a guy who seems to spend most of his time quaffing premium whiskies and watching snuff videos, that should probably be taken as a warning for everyone involved.

The target is a prime chunk of turf in central Tokyo owned by a Buddhist nun (Izumi Matsuoka) who has vowed never to sell. Rather than attempt to win her over, Harrison and his team connive to use an impostor in order to dupe a major real estate company into splurging over ¥10 billion on an illusory sale. Meanwhile, an aging detective (Lily Franky) who let the gang slip through his fingers once before senses that, with help from his plucky new partner (Elaiza Ikeda), he may have another chance to bag them.

Caught in the middle is Harrison’s protege, Takumi (Go Ayano), who has mastered the art of the con but seems not to treat it with the same relish as his comrades (including an all-cylinders Pierre Taki and Kazuki Kitamura). We’re supposed to believe that he chose this line of work in the hope of tracking down the real-estate scammer who swindled his own father, leading indirectly to the deaths of his wife and son. But like Walter White in “Breaking Bad,” Takumi seems to have stuck with a life of crime because he’s good at it.

Adapting a 2019 novel by Ko Shinjo, One (who also wrote the screenplay) tackles the story with the same brio that made his paparazzi dramedy “Scoop!” (2016) such a treat. This isn’t one of those “Ocean’s Eleven”-style affairs that keeps you guessing until the final minutes about how the crooks pulled off their scam. One — who has mentioned Juzo Itami’s “A Taxing Woman” (1987) as an inspiration — keeps everything legible, to the point that viewers may find themselves nodding along during arcane contract negotiations.

Character development is mostly an afterthought. Ayano’s Takumi is indistinguishable from the sullen antiheroes he’s played in films such as Michihito Fujii’s “A Family” (2021), while Toyokawa’s Harrison is a one-note villain. Most of the rest of the cast compensate with charisma for what their characters lack in depth.

Set in a luxe world of high-end hotels, host clubs and executive suites, “Tokyo Swindlers” isn’t short on excitement. At multiple points, the show seems to ask what’s the most ridiculous thing that could happen and then runs with it. The body count is as high as you’d expect from a yakuza movie, and the players are only marginally more sympathetic. It’s the stuff that binges are made of.