It’s a story that affects millions (to say nothing of the planet as a whole), but it’s also specifically about these people, and that’s a trait shared by all six episodes. It’s key to the success of “Payday,” the Jesse Moss-directed second installment, which centers on the story of Scott Tucker, a payday loans mogul whose elite racing cars are being seized by the government as the episode opens. Tucker’s the kind of figure it would be easy to paint as almost cartoonishly evil, getting rich by taking advantage of the desperation of low-income families. Moss doesn’t shy away from that, but he’s more interested in how someone like Tucker processes his own wrongdoing. Tucker’s given plenty of time to talk, and his favorite subject seems to be the ways in which he’s victimized. Moss’s careful framing helps to underline the hypocrisy present in Tucker, lingering often on a graceful chandelier or an expensive grill, but his isn’t a cruel perspective. The camera doesn’t need to condemn Tucker, who seems perfectly capable of doing that himself.

Unlike Tucker, the wrongdoers central to Erin Lee Carr’s “Drug Short” appear only in news footage—a CNBC clip here, a snippet of a Senate hearing there—but they loom no less large. The best outing of the series, “Drug Short” focuses on Valeant Pharmaceuticals and its C.E.O., Michael Pearson, as well as the reporters and short sellers who discovered that the company was built like a house of cards. Carr moves the narrative forward in unexpected ways, sometimes asking a question and withholding the answer until the viewers had some time to figure it out alone—one such instance, in which she asks why a subject has asked to remain anonymous, is particularly effective. But even at its most straightforward, “Drug Short” epitomizes what “Dirty Money” does at its best: makes clear the wrongs that have been done, while also illustrating how hard, how nearly impossible, it is to do anything about them.

Each installment achieves that aim, more or less. They’re not all gems—the final hour, “The Confidence Man,” suffers a bit because the ethical bankruptcy of the guy currently occupying the Oval Office is already extremely well-documented—but not one of these six hours is a dud, either. If nothing else, the series offers a chance to take in similar stories from six unique directors, and while there’s definitely a sense of thematic and stylistic continuity, “Dirty Money” also allows each director plenty of room to work in their own way. The result is a showcase for six skilled directors, and if the series gave me plenty of reasons to despair for the future of the country, it also made me very optimistic about the future of documentary television. Our country’s ethical coffers may be running low, but when it comes to filmmaking, there’s a glass half full. 

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