Mountainhead, A Picking Fish And A Guilt-free Breakfast
Evil tech overlords plan a global political coup - when they're done arguing over a six-man, line-caught turbot, that is
What To Watch Tonight: Mountainhead (Sky / NOW)
Where could Jesse Armstrong go next after Succession? As a genre-defining dramedy that skewered old media dynasties so successfully that Rupert Murdoch banned Jerry Hall from speaking about her divorce settlement with the show’s writers; it was going to be a tough act to follow.
Armstrong has stayed in the same lane for his first post-Succession project, and has turned his razor-sharp eye for satire on to the tech billionaires instead. Mountainhead – his first ever feature-length film written and directed by him – is a much-watch for the Roy-heads; very similar in style, setting, tone and humour, which is to say that like its predecessor, it does not miss a single shot.
Four insanely wealthy tech rulers meet up for the most toxic lads’ weekend ever in a luxury compound in Utah. There’s Venis (Cory Michael Smith), who owns the fictional Facebook dupe, Traam; Jeff (Ramy Youssef) who’s created an AI-detecting filter; Peter Thiel-like tech guru Randall (Steve Carrell), and the poor cousin of the gang, Soup (Jason Schwartzman) who’s currently looking to increase his lowly $500 million to his first “B-nut” with his mental health app, Slowzo.
While there’s quick-fire insults and thinly disguised hatred between much of the group; friends purely because of their collective wealth and general disdain for anyone not in their Brewster gang, on Venis’ arrival, there might be a little problem with Traam. Real-life global violence is breaking out as a response to people posting fake AI-created attack videos on his site. If only a man less than three metres away from Venis had a program that allowed people to ascertain if the videos were real or fake!
What follows is an imagining of what might happen if the world started literally burning, and the richest men in the world decided to go full final boss.
Randall talks about using his access to the electrical and energy supplies systems and “browning out” France – a little almost too on-the-nose, when a mysterious force took out the electricity in Spain, Portugal and parts of France a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, in the time since filming took place in March 2025, Armstrong’s prescient vision has struck again: social media disinformation has been charged with amplifying tension and real life violence between India and Pakistan.
Let me tell you, for however much Mountainhead is a brilliant farcical satire, it always sits uncomfortably close to what could potentially end up becoming reality as our tech overlords get increasingly evermore unhinged and despotic. They might just be “razzing” us; but the punchline is grim.
What do they eat and drink in Mountainhead?
These are tech billionaires, intent on optimising every waking second of their existence for the purposes of a) stockpiling more money than there’s -illion words for; b) trying to outlive death and/or c) funding an 8-minute joy ride to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere in the name of feminism (hah!). So for these presumably Huel-loving fellas, eating’s cheating – in fact, it’s one of the very tenets of their weekend retreat, as Randall reminds them: “no deals, no meals, no high heels”. The only food these men have time for, it appears, is when they mention a previous explicit act when the four men…defiled a pop-tart; a game I’ve been reliably informed is known in British boarding schools as soggy biscuit. (I’m so sorry).
So while there’s a beautiful looking crudites platter – nothing screams quiet luxury more than a $200 selection of farmers’ market vegetables and anchovy butter – the lads are appalled when Soup suggests cooking up some fish. A “six-man, line-caught turbot” to be exact. It’s a poker weekend, Jeff says: “It’s supposed to be club sandwiches, heart attack burgers, chicken buckets…” But Soup’s not giving up on his “magnificent” turbot – “it’s more of a picking fish”, he says; this £150 fish is a girl dinner to these guys, on par with a grab-bag of Walkers and corner shop hummus for the rest of us.
True to their plan, there’s not a lot of eating going on across one eventful night, but as dawn breaks, there’s also a breakfast buffet more awkward than The Traitors morning feast. Can anybody choke down a pastry, or one of three (three!) fresh smoothies, as they doom scroll through global atrocities of their own making? Sure – unlike the general population, there’s no nervous tum issues for these men; these remorseless psychopaths dig straight in. Can’t feel any guilt if you’ve got no empathy to begin with!
What should I eat and drink while watching Mountainhead?
Not a whole turbot; but equally not a bottle of Huel. One of the nicest meals I’ve had recently was when a friend cooked me this anchovy spaghetti dish – it was so simple, so tasty and also really quick to whip up. Incidentally, it’s also the sort of homely Italian cooking that you could charge £50 a plate to the mega-wealthy without them blinking. So let’s dig in…
Sicilian anchovy pasta
Serves 4
Ingredients:
A 320g packet of spaghetti
About 50g of breadcrumbs (I blitzed up some leftover weekend sourdough in my Nutribullet)
4 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
8 anchovies, from a tin or jar
Basil leaves
A lemon
Salt and pepper
Method
Put the spaghetti on to cook in a saucepan of boiling water.
In a frying pan, heat the breadcrumbs for a minute or two, until toasted.
Remove the breadcrumbs and put in a bowl.
In the same frying pan, heat the olive oil, garlic and anchovies until the anchovies are dissolved.
Add all breadcrumbs back into the pan and mix well to coat.
Drain the pasta when ready, and then add to the breadcrumbs in the frying pan and mix until coated.
Tear in a small handful of basil leaves on top, and add the zest of about half a lemon on too.
Mix again, and serve, adding salt and pepper to taste.
To drink, I’d pair it with a wine from Forty Hall Vineyard, where I visited this weekend (and really recommend!). Remarkably, it’s London’s only large-scale organic vineyard, and it’s in Enfield — with the vines growing in the shadow of two tower blocks, and you can even make out the Shard in the distance.
Check out their 2023 Bacchus, a zingy, citrusy drink with a little note of elderflower (£19), perfect for a pasta pairing.
Cheers!