David E. Kelley brings Tom Wolfe's massive 1998 novel to Netflix in a six-episode limited series that captures much of the book's satirical energy while making the necessary compressions for the medium. Jeff Bridges plays Charlie Croker, a larger-than-life Atlanta real estate developer whose financial empire is on the verge of collapse, whose marriage is crumbling, and who finds himself entangled in a racial-political scandal with implications extending across the city's elite. It's a meaty role that draws on everything Bridges does well — swagger, vulnerability, self-delusion — and the veteran actor delivers one of his most physically present performances in years.

The series uses Wolfe's Atlanta as a vehicle for examining the persistent myths of the American South: the plantation-era roots of its real estate fortunes, the complicated performances of masculinity among its business elite, and the racial tensions that simmer beneath the surface of its civic life. Kelley's script doesn't entirely escape the oversimplifications that adapting a 742-page novel inevitably brings, but the production is handsomely mounted and boasts a strong supporting cast including Tom Pelphrey as a conflicted lawyer and Diane Lane as Croker's ex-wife watching his empire crumble from a safe distance.

Matt Bomer co-stars in a parallel storyline following a prisoner whose unlikely journey intersects with Croker's in ways that Wolfe used to explore Stoic philosophy and personal transformation. The Netflix adaptation streamlines some threads, but the essential ambition of Wolfe's project — to paint a panoramic portrait of American class anxiety in a specific time and place — comes through. A Man in Full is entertaining, sprawling prestige television that wears its literary pedigree with pride. Streaming on Netflix.