Originally, Marty was a highly successful partner at consultancy firm Galweather Stearn, where he headed up a pod consisting of engagement manager Jeannie van der Hooven, and associates Clyde Oberholt and Doug Guggenheim.

The main character, Marty, often breaks the fourth wall; he talks to the viewers in a freeze-frame bit in which he alone moves and the others in the background 'freeze' but continue where they left off.

[5] David Nevins, president of entertainment at Showtime, announced during the 2011 Television Critics Association press tour that the show was set to premiere on January 8, 2012.

The next actor to be cast was Dawn Olivieri who plays Monica, "Marty's crazy, pill-popping ex-wife and biggest professional competition as her consulting firm is No.

Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker, reviewing the pilot episode, thought the show's premise "sounds terrific in concept", that "Cheadle and Bell are each in their own way exceedingly charming performers with a devilish aspect to their images", and that it has debuted at a good time: "at this time in history, who doesn't want to see undeservingly wealthy people get fleeced, or at least brought low by their avarice?"

[12] In stark contrast, Matt Rouch, writing for TV Guide, thought that "as a pitiless, biting satire of the debauched state of American big business, it's no lie to call this one of the smartest, funniest shows of the new year", praising its being "[d]eeply cynical, garish in its raunchiness and always rudely, lewdly hilarious".

"House of Lies is asking us not simply to laugh at this bunch of chancers, but to admire them for the way in which they rip people off," she writes, calling for a check-up on corporate America.