3 out of 5

Developed By: Chris Mundy

Covers season 1

This would’ve worked better as a movie, but at the same time, the payoff of character revelations in the last two episodes is earned by churning you through 8 hours of the previous eps, so I’m not sure how to effectively whittle it down to feature length.  LWS came to my attention via the stark, black and white photos of Mark Strong against an urban skyline with the title of the series in big and flat lettering next to him.  It was eye-catching, it was on AMC, and it did exactly what the marketing team hoped it would do – roped me in with a reference to Breaking Bad, for there was some inconsequential blurb like ‘from the station that brought you Breaking Bad,’ which really shouldn’t / could mean anything, and I already noted it was on AMC, but the name association did the trick to get me to tune in.  And it aired in tandem with the show, and it’s obvious that the long play of the format – not giving us direct payoffs from the get-go – was also intended to leverage the popularity of BB’s complexities into a new fanbase.  However, the difference is that Breaking Bad grew as it evolved, meaning it had premise and characters from the start… which it then began to nudge and mold.  LWS had its endpoint, then chopped up 40 minutes of viewtime into several episodes and, frankly, stuffed a lot of them with subplots that aren’t needed.  And I should be more negative on the overall experience.  I would not recommend this show.  But it never faltered in its setup (unlike the equally dour ‘Ray Donovan’), and was well cast, even if we can’t possibly like most of the cast because they’re playing assholes.  Mark Strong, in particular, was amazing.  Stunning in the finale.  With some shows, you continue to tune in because they’re tolerable and there’s also this gross fascination with sticking it out until the end, watching a ticking bomb, to be able to either confirm to yourself that it was worth it (bomb explodes) or that it was the crap you were convinced it was (bomb’s a dud).  (I apparently equally needed to prove to myself that that metaphor actually applied.)  Low Winter Sun wasn’t a lazy tune in.  It was one of complete bafflement, because the premise of the show was so off-putting that I couldn’t believe it was a show, and the conviction with which it was acted and produced kept suggesting there was something down the road…

So episode one opens with detectives Frank Agnew (Strong) and Joe Geddes (Lenny James) killing a fellow cop because – as they justify to themselves in the first few minutes, before the killing – the cop is crooked, and he might’ve killed a woman very important to Agnew.  Agnew pushes Geddes for details on what happened to the girl, and these details are enough to push him over the edge and make it all happen, and happen brutally.  They stage the killing to look like a suicide.  And when the body is discovered, whoops, it turns out IA had been investigating this cop for corruption and maybe Geddes was linked to that.  Agnew sniffs a double-cross; Geddes says it solved both their problems.  Mix this with a lot of swearing and yelling.  Thus neither of are principles are good cops from the get go.  Agnew seems oddly obsessive; Geddes is mixed up in bad business.  And the whole things is set against a bleak Detroit backdrop, filled with drug dealers, homeless, and more swearing and yelling.

Those drug dealers tie into one of the series’ biggest misfires, with James Ransome’s Damon Callis and up-and-coming dealer whose attempts at usurping power and expanding territory and the other dealers’ feathers it ruffles a focus of a couple episodes and a distraction for at least a few minutes of most.  The IGN reviews poo-pooed on Ransome’s casting as not being convincing as an imposing leader, the actor looking more like the insecure kid in school who comes back next year wearing a leather jacket in hopes of transforming himself into sudden badassness.  And I agree that his eyes portray a constant nervousness and not confidence, and that his slight frame and high-pitched voice don’t much become a gang enforcer.  He did annoy me.  But I think he was supposed to.  He was never the most intelligent planner in these 10 episodes, and though his small ring of troops listens to him, he’s got an attractive female on his side who might be helping things, and what IGN felt about his screen presence seemed to carry over to the rest of the gangs in town, with people stepping all over him.  Whether that was purposeful casting or not I can’t say, but it did end up fitting with his character arc, and I can’t really picture who would’ve been right for the role.  Supposing it was purposeful, an actor who could better balance the subtleties of looking and sounding tough but not actually feeling tough would’ve been good, but Ransome was on par with the other unlikeable characters.  His piece in the final puzzle wasn’t unimportant, but it was the pieces connected to his that ended up actually being important in the final shakedown, making the time we spent with Damon sort of pointless except as a link to those other bits.  Some tighter scripting could’ve eliminated this, but maybe that would bring us down to 8 episodes.  And lord knows that’s a sin.

The basic premise is that Agnew and Geddes must frame someone else for the crime they committed (compacting the notion that these are not good dudes at all), and as they spread out in search of some suitable trash to match the deed, IA closes in, and we find out more and more about Geddes involvement with things beforehand and Agnew’s strange obsessions.  Still, the series tries to reinforce that Geddes is trying to do right but got caught at some point and couldn’t get out, and kept getting deeper and deeper… and Agnew was (is) apparently something of a hero cop, known for his impeccable record and close rate.  Unfortunately, we can only be told these things; we’ve already started in the dark end of the tail, and the series has no intention of taking a breath of fresh air.  Which is where LWS earned my respect and interest.  It never stoops to flashing back to before the events that led us to our intro; we’re not allowed to see any good.  It’s a risky move, and not one that works for a series, really… which is why this could’ve been a devastating film.

When things wrap, it’s not all worth it.  Some of the focus is absolutely filler, and this isn’t Breaking Bad – pieces of the tale were purposefully withheld in order to make the revelations of episodes 9 and 10 have impact.  But those final two were some of the most riveting viewings I’ve had as of late, episode 9 in particular an insane non-stop rush of Agnew in full-on panic mode as the strings tighten.  What’s worth it is Mark Strong.  When we’re brought face to face with how distraught and fractured Frank Agnew is, it makes all of the character’s actions in the series  worth reconsidering.  The other roles don’t quite have this change of face, but again, I respect the consistency with which the corruption is played.

There was no right way to do this.  The point of Low Winter Sun was to force us to watch something horrible and to get us to consider the What and the Why of one man’s actions.  That seed is effective.  The decision to buffer it with extra nastiness from all around was a risky move and doesn’t make for the most friendly viewing.  An interesting concept, but viewers be advised.