The Billionaire Series Netflix

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BadBoy Billionaires: India is a 2020 Indian Netflix original documentary anthology television series which focuses on the lives of four prominent business magnates of India, including Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Subrata Roy and Ramalinga Raju, who achieved predominant success in their businesses during their lifetime before being accused of corruption.[1]

The documentary chronicles major financial scams in India and was released in part, following a lawsuit initiated by Subrata Roy's Sahara Group.[2] Netflix unveiled the official trailer of the film on 24 August 2020 and it was reported that the trailer was removed subsequently from the platform following legal issues.[3] The documentary was initially scheduled to be streamed via Netflix on 2 September 2020.[4][5]

Three (out of four) episodes of Bad Boy Billionaires released globally on Netflix in October 2020 to enthusiastic reviews and strong viewership.[6][7][8] It went on to enjoy a multiple-week run as the number one most-watched Netflix title in India while also nearing the top of Netflix's global charts[9] and being named the most-watched documentary of the year 2020 in India.[10][11] It won the Filmfare Award, India's top film honour, in 2021.[12]

The documentary series explores scandals involving controversial Indian billionaires Vijay Mallya (Kingfisher Airlines), Subrata Roy (Sahara India), Nirav Modi (Gitanjali Group) and Ramalinga Raju (Satyam Computers).[13]

On 28 August 2020, two petitions were filed against the release of the documentary in the Bihar district court. Bihar court passed an interim stay order on the petition filed by Subrata Roy against the release of the documentary in the Netflix platform. Following the stay order by the Bihar court, Netflix threatened to move to the Supreme Court against the court order for restraining the documentary release.[14]

Diamond merchant Mehul Choksi also filed a petition against the release of the documentary in the Delhi High Court and further filed a request demanding for the pre-screening of the documentary.[15][16] Mehul Choksi filed the plea after being told that his involvement related to the Punjab National Bank Scam was also covered in the documentary. However his plea was dismissed by a single judge panel of the Delhi High Court on 29 August 2020.[17]

On 1 September 2020, Hyderabad civil court restrained the release of the webseries after issuing a stay order on a petition filed by Ramalinga Raju.[18] Raju claimed that the webseries documents half-truths about him and insisted that it would tarnish his reputation and privacy in an unlawful way.[19]

On 5 October 2020, Netflix released three out of four films in the anthology, including those featuring Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy, while the final episode about Ramalinga Raju remained encumbered by legal injunctions and as of July 2024 has yet to be released.[21]

With the busy, on-the-go lifestyle of an entrepreneur, it can be good for your mental health to take a break and watch some TV. It can be a positive distraction. The right shows can teach you something or just simply be relatable to you and your startup and leave you feeling inspired and motivated.

To help you get the most from your downtime, we compiled a list of the best TV show to stream on Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV, and beyond. Here is our list of shows that every entrepreneur should be watching:

This TV show is a three-part documentary series that tells the life of Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Throughout the series, it focuses on his personal relationships, career at Microsoft, his interests in improving sanitation and climate change, and eradicating illness in various parts of the world.

In 2004 Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford University to start a company to revolutionize healthcare. Theranos was born. Theranos is a blood-testing startup that claimed to devised blood tests that only required small amounts of blood and could be performed rapidly using small devices. Elizabeth Holmes was valued at $9 billion, and was the youngest female billionaire in the world. Two years later, the company was cited by the SEC for fraud. This documentary investigates the rise and fall of Theranos, and who is responsible.

Netflix's newest true crime sensation, French docuseries The Billionaire, the Butler, and the Boyfriend, has a pretty by-the-book ending. After witnessing three episodes of juicy gossip packed with shocking grifts and a real-life succession drama, viewers are treated to a series of cards explaining what happened to the characters of the story after they went to court to settle a decade-long battle involving one of the largest corporations in the world. However, there is a glaring absence in these final moments. While we learn that L'Oral heiress Liliane Bettencourt, the titular billionaire, was placed under guardianship and passed away in 2017, and that her so-called boyfriend, photographer Franois-Marie Banier, received a relatively light sentence for his financial abuse, there is no mention of one very important character: the butler, Pascal Bonnefoy.

The man who blew everything wide open with his secret recordings of conversations between his employer and her many visitors, particularly her asset manager Patrice de Maistre, was not tracked down by series creators Baptiste Etchegaray and Maxime Bonnet. Much like Liliane Bettencourt, her daughter Franoise Bettencourt Meyers, and Franois-Marie Banier, the titular butler is absent from the show's interviews. However, he's also absent from most of the story, being brought up only briefly when the series recounts how the Bettencourt recordings reached the French media, giving rise to a scandal of national proportions. To be frank, it's even a bit weird that the miniseries' English title is The Billionaire, the Butler, and the Boyfriend when Bonnefoy is hardly featured in the documentary at all.

The whole drama starts when photographer Franoise-Marie Banier is hired to take a few portraits of L'Oral's main shareholder and de facto owner Liliane Bettencourt. Trapped in an empty life and an unhappy marriage, Bettencourt finds herself smitten with Banier's crass and nonchalant ways, quickly promoting him to her new best friend. Though the title of the series suggests a romantic relationship between the two, there is nothing to indicate that Banier was indeed Bettencourt's boyfriend, with the series even stating that the photographer is gay.

Bettencourt and Banier's relationship flows smoothly until the death of Liliane's husband, Andr Bettencourt, in 2007. Following his departure, Bettencourt begins to gift her friend expensive works of art and large sums of money that quickly catch the attention of her only daughter, Franoise. Things get even direr when she finds that Banier has asked Bettencourt to adopt him. Convinced that her mother is being financially abused by Banier, she decides to take him to court. By her side, she has an unexpected ally: Liliane's once faithful butler, Pascal Bonnefoy, who also fears that his mistress is being exploited out of her wealth. So, he secretly records over 20 hours of conversation between Bettencourt and members of her inner circle between 2009 and 2010.

Bonnefoy's recordings did indeed prove that Bettencourt was not in a good mental state to be giving out presents, neither to Banier nor to anyone else, including her financial advisor Patrice de Maistre who was on the verge of convincing her to buy him a new boat. However, the 20 hours of audio also reveal that Bettencourt had been comitting tax evasion, stealing millions from France's coffers, and possibly donating illegal sums of cash to the campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the country's president from 2007 to 2012. Did she know that she was doing all that? It is unclear, because Bonnefoy's recordings also prove that Bettencourt was starting to show signs of what was later diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease, with the billionaire even struggling to remember if she was in 2000 or 2010 in one of the cuts used in the docuseries.

All of this is fairly well-documented in Etchegaray and Bonnet's show. What the series doesn't tell us is what happened to Pascal Bonnefoy after he turned in his recordings to Franoise Bettencourt Meyers. And, as it turns out, Liliane' butler got in his own fair share of trouble for spying on his boss. Bonnefoy left his job in May 2010, about the same time he gave Franoise the evidence she needed to turn her mother's life upside down. Soon after, though, he was taken to court by Banier alongside five journalists for invasion of privacy. The six were acquitted in a 2017 ruling on the very day of Liliane's death, September 21.

Bonnefoy had a pretty simple strategy for recording Liliane's conversations with her inner circle: whenever someone came to visit her in her office, Bettencourt would ask her butler to bring them a tray with coffee, water, and other goods. Beneath a small cloth protecting the tray from spillage, Bonnefoy hid his digital recorder. "I'm neither a hero nor a vigilante, I do my duty", he once told the French version of Vanity Fair in an interview about his deeds. In the 2013 story, he explains that he feared that Banier's influence over Bettencourt would erase everything that remained of her husband and spell the end of her entire estate.

"I wanted to know what was being planned. To protect the mistress of those that manipulated her, and, at the same time, to protect myself. I felt like I was on their way. They wanted to get rid of me," he explains, referring to the plot to get rid of all anti-Banier staff at the Bettencourt mansion that is briefly mentioned in the show. Though he eventually left the household on his own terms, Bonnefoy was one of the employees targeted by that strange witch hunt. He was even questioned about whether he had testified against Banier to the police. This is what prompted Bonnefoy to buy the now-famous recorder that he used to spy on Bettencourt.

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