Billion Dollar Playground review: eat, sorry, serve the rich!

New series Billion Dollar Playground promises to take viewers inside some of Australia’s most expensive residences. Consider yourself warned.

It’s an unwritten rule of reality television that the fancier or more exotic the setting, the more bitchy the people blundering through it. Maybe it’s social commentary; maybe it’s just that endless luxury brings out the worst in people.

Luxury travel firm Luxico claim to manage over a billion dollars’ worth of luxury properties, which in a more equitable society would see them fleeing the country as their clients assets were forcibly nationalised and converted into community housing. Just kidding! There’s nothing like being told that ‘Sydney is the epicentre of wealth in Australia – everywhere you look screams money’ when you can’t make your rent.

Billion Dollar Playground: experiences

Into this playground of the rich and not-really-famous are dropped Luxico’s staff of house keepers and waiters, whose job it is to provide the ultra-wealthy clients (mostly ladies who lunch) with an experience they’ll never forget.

Watch the Billion Dollar Playground trailer.

Sadly for fans of European movies where rich snobs and their hard done-by staff are trapped somewhere and the tables slowly turn until everyone dies of the plague, here the experience is confined to fancy meals, gorgeous views and impeccable service no matter what the request.

Sure, sometimes those requests involve a male gardener tearing off his shirt while the wealthy female holiday-makers cheer, but if you’re going to let morals and a sense of decorum – or just basic hygiene – shape your behaviour then you’re just not cut out for life amongst the 1%. No war but class war! Sorry, no idea where that came from.

If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like popular reality show franchise Below Decks, this is completely different because that’s set on fancy yachts and this is set in fancy houses. Also here the brutal overlords constantly nit-picking everything their underlings do are called concierges, with head concierge Salvatore being an early standout thanks to him telling us it’s all about the guests while everything he says and does makes it extremely clear that it’s all about his ruthless lust for power.

Billion Dollar Playground: bosses & staff

Class war aside, and honestly if this show doesn’t get you heading down to Bunnings for guillotine supplies nothing will, this does a pretty solid job of balancing out the awful bosses with the hard-working staff.

Well, apart from the staff who are working hard to get into a position where they can be just as awful as their current bosses. And the ones who are just there to ‘screw the crew’, because work hard play hard whoops another guy just took off his shirt.

Salvatore’s number-two, the high-energy Heaven, tells us early on that a big part of the appeal of her job is the chance to live vicariously through her clients. It’s a surprisingly relatable and human thing to say. Then again, she also says she loves private jets while we’re shown a picture of a plane that, going by the turboprop engines, is not a jet, so who knows what’s really going on.

Heaven is great with guests but can be disorganised. Salvatore seems to basically live for hierarchy – with him the one everyone else salutes. Sensing conflict, the Luxico bosses have brought in ambitious new concierge, Jasmin, who of course everyone will get along with just fine and already there’s plenty of drama even before we see the first client.

Does that drama take the shape of an action movie where the catering staff turn out to be gun-toting terrorists who take everyone hostage and tell the police they’re striking a blow for economic equality while secretly they’re breaking into the safe to steal a billion dollars worth of diamonds? Sadly not, which seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity.

Instead what we get is a fairly frothy mix of soapy staff antics, luxury porn, fancy food, the occasional spider, and bosses who say things like ‘it’s a high pressure job, but pressure makes diamonds – and rich people love diamonds’. We’ve seen it all before but relaxing into the cliches is part of the fun, shoutout to the extremely bitchy sommelier.

The staff are mostly likable (unless they’re not). The good-looking chef brothers are clearly using this as a launching pad for their own business. The luxury and excess is enjoyably tacky at times, and the storylines are both low stakes and high drama.

Can the staff get a fresh bottle of Dom without the guests realising they’ve been caught short? How will they handle a dog that can’t be in the house when a guest says ‘everywhere he goes, I go’?

Oh wait, everyone’s rich. They just buy their way out of everything.

Billion Dollar Playground premieres on 13 May 2025 on Binge with new episodes weekly.

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