In the UK: Thursdays, 8pm, Sky Atlantic
Since Sky Atlantic’s outset, it’s had two missions:
- To make you want to buy a Sky HD add-on, by showing you some beautiful locations and lots of pretty celebrities
- To mess around with genre, so you never know what you’re going to get
The first has been a feature of virtually every Sky drama, whether it’s been the Spanish-set Falcón, the Riviera-set Riviera or the Iceland-based Fortitude, all of which were beautiful to look at, not all of which were great drama.
The less obvious, genre-switching remit has been there from the outset, too. Why have a drama about a trans woman meeting her hitherto unsuspected pre-transition children and another about a contract killer when you can have both in the form of Hit and Miss? Fortitude, of course, initially looked like a simple piece of Nordic Noir, with a murder on an isolated island, before ultimately becoming a piece of sci-fi horror about (spoiler alert) parasitic wasps from before the dawn of time.
Now we have Tin Star, a new Sky Atlantic show created by Rowan Joffe (The American, 28 Weeks Later) that sets out to fulfil both Sky Atlantic remits. It sees Tim Roth playing an ex-Met officer who emigrates to a small Canadian town with his family in order to give them a safer, better life. He’s also a recovering alcoholic and believes that without the stresses of London, his chances of a relapse are smaller, too.
However, an oil company wants to set up operations near the town and sends PR woman Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) and security officer Christopher Heyerdahl (Hell on Wheels) to persuade the townsfolk. The townsfolk could do with the cash, both from the company and the workers they’ll bring; Sheriff Roth points out that they’ll bring crime with them at levels the town might fight difficult to deal with.
A year later, all is as Roth predicted. And when he takes a stand, his house and family are attacked. Before you know it, there’s a family tragedy. Who did it? What will Roth do in response? Can he stay sober? Will he want revenge?
Indeed, Tin Star is billed as a revenge thriller. But who’s getting revenge on whom? And can Sky Atlantic do a straight revenge thriller, or is it all going to be something a whole lot weirder than that?
I’ll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum after the jump, as I reviewed the entire first series. Enjoy this trailer first, though.
Continue reading “Boxset Monday: Tin Star (UK: Sky Atlantic)”
