4 out of 5

Created by: Rebecca Cutter

covers seasons 1 – 3

I am haunted by my review of the UK show Misfits. I always kind of recognized that TV shows had the propensity to change mightily over their runs, and so tried to offer caution when I’ve just watched a first season – e.g. “this was good, but it will be hard to maintain…” – or make sure I watch as much of a show’s older seasons as are available before making judgment on a current season. For Misfits, I was bummed that the relative tightness and buildup of its first three years was essentially ditched for season four, but I adjusted, and gave it a generally very positive review.

And then season five. A show I had told all my friends (admittedly a small number, but still…) they had to catch up on before its final season aired, and then it did, and… And then it did. It essentially continued the trend of season four, so I let my review stand – I do try to go back and update or add a note if I feel something truly changed my take – but whatever brain work I did to make season four feel part of the whole was less possible with season five. So the review does stand, but I’m leaning heavily on my little blurb that it was written prior to season five; I just know I would’ve written it much differently – even if arriving at a similar overall conclusion – with the entirety of the show to reflect on.

With that classic preamble out of the way: Hightown. Hightown consists of a stunning – if Starz-oversexed – first season, and a frankly equally stunning second season that kind of sort of balances out some of the oversexness with even stronger character work, but also hints of what could go structurally awry should the show continue down certain roads, and then a third season where they go down those roads. And also go back to dumb sex. And, like, erect dicks, I think to counter the bevy of ultra skinny naked chicks, which I kind of respect? But it ultimately comes across as the writers scrambling to find something that “works,” and ending up as a parody of the first two seasons as a result. But: sprinkled into that third season – or maybe abstracted from – are some strong character arcs, and some late turnarounds that make you sigh a big finally, like the we’re getting back to the themes that are more interesting, and then it blows up a bit in the finale. Overall, though, I’m more comfortable with standing back from this rather messy series with its Misfits-like drop off as its first two seasons – Starz-ness aside – are sincerely top tier TV: Breaking Bad-like tension and Wire toughness, relocated and localized to a freewheeling Cape Cod. And even that drop off, as mentioned, has clear enough glimmers of what stood out that you don’t feel horrible watching it all the way through… with, maybe, some arguments that its parodic repetition is a more “realistic” depiction of people’s habitual behaviors, even if that argument is silly as it makes for cringey TV.

Hightown primarily focuses on Massachusetts Fisheries Service Agent Jackie (Monica Raymund) – a cop on a boat, tracking illegal fishing ops – after, on a particularly drunken morning, she stumbles across a murdered woman’s corpse on the beach. Stirred from her casual life of lecturing shady fishmongers and nightly drink / drug / sex binges to help the State Police investigate, Jackie lands a type of consultant post with the police, pairing her with charming but abrasive detective Ray (James Badge Dale).

Through partial ignorance of policy and partial forcefulness of will, Jackie makes it quite far in her quest, stumbling into / becoming aware of the larger effects of the drug culture in Cape Cod, and its bustling economy of vice. This is paired with Jackie’s own growingly problematic addictions – triggered further whenever she runs into a wall with the case – and is paralleled with other lead characters’ own (and different) addictions.

Although this is all glammed up with a lot of Cinemaxed sex, Hightown differentiates itself first thanks to Raymund, who brings immense weight and believability to Jackie, but also through the character work it provides her and others: while the moral grays of the show are pulled from The Shield and other shows mentioned, there’s an intense focus on trying to humanize almost everyone to an extent – drug addicts, sex workers, gangsters; something that also gets lost in the first part of season 3 – and allow good to come from bad, and bad to come from intended good. We don’t always take the higher drama-filled road just because, and surprisingly instead divert down more logical ones… only for a smarter turn to bring the drama back in. This makes for a highly bingeable TV model, but also one of those ideal ones where you’re addicted because you actually end up caring about characters.

Again, this does get gummed up when we start to cycle through more ignorant versions of the same good/bad cycles at season 3’s outset; as that ended up being the final season, I’d also wonder if the writers were purposefully compressing things, which dinged the quality. There’s truly a point in the season towards the end where it suddenly just clicks back into place – it’s at the crux of a conversation where two characters are being particularly dumb, and then suddenly… click.

Atkins Estimond deserves an additional callout as Osito and Imani Lewis as Charmaine; both elevate their respective pieces of the series in the same way as Raymund, which helps everyone else around them to step up as well.

Hightown is an excellent addition to a relatively short list of impactful crime series – series that are good beyond the tension of their content and actually manage to touch on larger issues in some way. By not trying to take a hardline stance on its characters’ vices, and instead kind of sitting back and showing the lifestyles and cultures in a particular place, Hightown allows those characters to fill that place more realistically, and thus gives us room to come to our own feelings about what’s right or wrong, and what that’s relative to.