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Having made its Stateside premiere back in March, Justified, a new drama series based on the crime novels by Elmore Leonard, has made its way onto UK Freeview channel Five USA in exceedingly quick time. Having been critically acclaimed back home can this show translate well for British audiences?
That may seem like a bit of a loaded question but it is a very valid one seeing that much of this new series is derived from a mixture of stereotypes and old-fashioned Americana that may be inaccessible to those who are not well versed in American culture. Such an issue can be observed in the magazine advertisements depicting Timothy Olyphant as this Stetson wearing cop with a smouldering look that evokes memories of cigarette ads of decades gone by. After careful consideration following the airing of the pilot episode ‘Fire In The Hole’ such opinions may only be partially accurate seeing that while there are many esoteric elements specific to the American psyche, the essence of this series has been a consistent feature in crime-fiction since its conception way back when.
Justified centres around Raylan Givens, a US Marshal who has found himself reassigned from his previous post in Miami to a district in Kentucky after shooting and killing a man on sight. This matter is further complicated with him having given this man the illegal threat of leaving town in 24 hours or being killed. This event acts as a perfect start to the series in two ways. Firstly we get a quick character sketch of Givens as this charismatic Old West Sheriff style policeman trapped in the bureaucratic quagmire of modern day policing, but also we see the beginnings of an intriguing plot line as we are yet to receive many clues as to what drove Givens to do this.
Armchair analysis of Givens’ character aside, it is the web of supporting characters that actually provide the majority of the talking points. At the forefront of this is the array of bible-toting, swastika-tattooed White Supremacists that lurk in his hometown of Harlan County. In the Pilot this group blow up a church and openly quote their interpretations of Genesis as a means of supporting their anti-Semitism. Yes, they are twisted and at times they make you feel uncomfortable, but where these characters could have so easily been overplayed there are in some cases a subtlety and a history that makes them oddly compelling.
However, the opening episode of Justified does fall into the trap that befalls all new American crime series of such a scope in that there is such a large compliment of characters that the introductions can feel a tad rushed and at times there are things that the writers have assumed we know when there has been no prior cues as to the relationships. This criticism aside, since the pilot episode is notoriously hard to balance gripping storyline and character development, what we have here is the beginnings of an interesting new series that does improve as you make your way further into the season with the seething underbelly of both Harlan County and Raylon Givens himself being truly brought to the surface. Latter episodes have already been reported to be ironing out these problems and building a momentum that have ensured FX their latest in a long line of cable hits in America. In Britain though, seeing that this is premiering on Five US, we need to wait and see how well it will do.
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