Mayor of Kingstown, a New Series From Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone)

Mayor of Kingstown, the new series from writer-director Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone), is a very bad show. So comprehensive is its failure, in fact, that I was almost relieved, finishing the episodes screened for critics, to recall that the program exists to prop up ViacomCBS’s neglected streaming platform, Paramount+. Were it not for this deliberate market function, Sheridan’s latest venture might lie beyond the reach of human explanation altogether.

The headliner in this instance is Jeremy Renner, who proceeds with all the one-dimensional mopery that Kate Winslet brought to HBO’s hard-bitten snoozefest earlier this year. Along with his brother, Mitch (Kyle Chandler), Mike serves as a mediator, errand boy, and all-purpose fixer in the fictional hamlet of Kingstown, Michigan, a burg containing seven prisons and nearly as many inmates as residents. The answer, obnoxiously murky until well into the second episode, is neither, despite the series’ name and a number of confusing suggestions to the contrary.

Mike will bribe a schoolboy to fetch a racket. Afraid that your incarcerated son is about to become someone’s “girlfriend”? Mitch knows exactly how the young man’s suicide attempt should be staged.

Watching Chandler, for instance, one comes away, as always, with the sense of pugnacity lightly worn, as if every dispute might soon erupt into a round of jokes. Indeed, the problem with both of these potential casting triumphs is that the show belongs so fully to Renner that little space remains for his higher caliber co-stars. Presented with a surfeit of interesting talent, Sheridan has built his series around a leading man of such joylessness that the production comes to feel like the “before” scenes in an advertisement for Zoloft.

Staging a home invasion/murder in episode one, Sheridan puts together a scene that is as flat and pitiless as any dramatic set piece in recent memory. Lingering inside an execution chamber for a gruesome 9-minute ordeal, the show underscores its materialistic, man-as-meat pessimism. By the time a child burns up in a meth lab explosion during episode three’s cold open, audiences will have come to recognize the show’s nasty modus operandi.

Who Is The Titular Mayor Of The Mclusky Family?

His films have found strength in their diverse portrayal of crime in America, complete with interesting and empathetic character studies alongside an obvious care for depicting under-reported areas of the country. Developed with Yellowstone actor and musician Hugh Dillion, the 10-episode series follows the McLusky family, led by titular mayor Mike (Jeremy Renner), who run the business of corruption in Kingstown, Michigan, where the entrenched incarceration system looms over every aspect of the town. On paper, prisons and the systemic incarceration of Americans seems a perfect fit for Sheridan.

Depraved acts serve either as shock value in an attempt to say “look how fucked up everything is,” or to become an educational moment where the momentum stops to show why something obviously horrible is bad. But it’s not enough to say incarceration and corruption is simply bad, which Mayor of Kingstown (as of the first three episodes sent to critics) seems to be missing. Her frequent monologues as she teaches incarcerated women about the unknown history of captivity are gripping, and she is able to steal a scene away from any of her costars.

But it’s also the kind of performance that makes you wish the series followed Bunny instead. Let’s get to Renner. The character of Mike is not outside Renner’s range, but it lacks cohesion.

Choose your own adventure, and hope the show sees it through. It’s hard to talk about Mayor of Kingstown without mentioning the way it handles race. The systematic discrimination and oppression of people of color through the prison system has become a much-discussed topic in media in recent years, led by works such as Ava Duverney’s documentary 13th and the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

And given that the corrupt white cops take more of a leading role than any character of color—who are almost all violent or power-hungry criminals—the show comes away with more of a muddled take on race and incarceration than should be expected from a skilled writer like Sheridan, especially given the wide amount of available material on the topic. Mayor of Kingstown wants to be brutal and dark, it wants to be educational, it wants to be character driven, but no element is handled with enough care or attention. Still, it’s not impossible to like aspects of Mayor of Kingstown.

Who Plays Mike Mclusky?

The Paramount+ series features all the signifiers of prestige TV, without any of the ingenuity that gives great programs their special sheen. One would be forgiven for confusing “Mayor of Kingstown” from Paramount+ with “Mare of Easttown” on HBO. Mayor or Mare, Kingstown or Easttown, Pennsylvania crime drama or Michigan crime drama.

This is no “Mare,” even if it’s meant to make you think so. Renner was already there. He plays Mike McLusky, a felon living and “working” in his hometown of Kingstown, MI, alongside his brother, Mitch (Emmy winner Kyle Chandler).

While helping families is something the McLuskys do out of the kindness of their hearts, this other sort of job nets them a $10 grand share of the illicit cash, which makes them, you guessed it, antiheroes. (Check!) Supposedly, it’s not for the money, not really for the power, and maybe, just maybe, rooted in a misguided willingness to do the right thing.

The official synopsis claims the series tackles “themes of systemic racism, corruption, and inequality,” but it’s yet to hint at a position on any of these topics, other than glorifying the corrupt. Both of these actually work as disincentives to keep watching (especially the twist), but speak more objectively to the root problem with “Mayor of Kingstown’s” rocky start: It’s only shocking in its lack of purpose. Not only is it a big ask to invite audiences into a world of abject misery without a clear reason to suffer, but the series’ primary personal question isn’t all that compelling.

Kingstown was made to service its prisons, and Mike is a prisoner of his own making. Why not build a life and live it well? Grade: C- “Mayor of Kingstown” premieres Sunday, November 14 on Paramount+.

What Is The Name Of The White Prisoner’S Father?

The white prisoner’s father will come to Mike and Mitch and plead that they do something to help his kid. Mitch, who’s known as the “mayor” of this town, even though he’s just the superintendent of these prisons, usually figures out a solution. Mike and Mitch retrieve the money without any issues and Mitch throws it in his safe.

Well, that night, a stringy gangbanger named Alberto gets a lap dance from Vera, who makes him feel like the biggest man in the world when he’s paying, but turns off the charm the second the dance is over. Whatever “it” is in regards to screenwriting, Taylor Sheridan has it. But Taylor Sheridan somehow is able to make the mundane captivating.

Mitch was the main character! From that moment on, Sheridan had me in the palm of his hand. Most of his stories are 2-3 people in a room talking.

All of his scenes seemed to be centered around a PROBLEM. “My kid is stuck in prison and people are trying to kill him. Can you help me?”

There wasn’t any dramatic tension in the scenes. Or, if there wasn’t a problem, there was an undercurrent of potential danger. He just wants to tell a good story.

One of the hardest things to do in television is make someone want to read (or watch) your next episode.

How Many Times Has A Cowboy Watched “Lonesome Dove”?

[Laughs.] Every cowboy I know has a copy of “Lonesome Dove” and has watched it 700 times. They don’t watch anything but cowboys.

Did anyone on those shows become a mentor when you started writing your own screenplays? Honestly? My mentor was Cormac McCarthy.

All the writers who moved me. I’ve never taken a screenwriting class in my life. Most of the television work I did was not very good.

When I quit acting and decided to tell my own stories, I had kept most of the scripts I auditioned for and a bunch of them that I’d done, so I sat down and spent about four days rereading them. I’m writing to that ending. There’s only so much hovering one can do before the story starts to lose its locomotion; you can’t put it in neutral just because it’s successful.