Telewitterings – Justified S1

I’m getting in a little late on this one, maybe, but Kelly and I have been watching the first year of Justified on Netflix Canada. Later seasons aren’t available yet, we’re all of one episode from the end, and I’m hooked and hoping they get S2 soon. It’s a nice feeling.

The big attraction–and don’t they know it!–is Timothy Olyphant, who plays ill-tempered U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. Raylan was definitely an outsider within his family of origin, and dealt with it in the time-honored fashion of getting a job that took him far, far away from home. But a penchant for fatally shooting criminals has gotten him sent back to Lexington, Kentucky. Now he’s coping with the dad he left in the rear-view, his ex-wife, a woman who’s been nursing a crush on him since high school and an old friend who enjoys long walks in the forest, church, robbing banks, setting off bombs and homicide.

Here’s the trailer:

Justified was created by Graham Yost, the guy behind one of my favorite cop shows in the whole world, the multi-faceted and complex Boomtown. While its storytelling is more linear–which may be why it didn’t get cancelled just coming out of the gate–its characters are just as nuanced and humanly unpredictable. It’s a violent show, but not horrifyingly so. Olyphant is brilliant, as is his foil Walter Goggins. The supporting cast is engaging, and the season’s arc is tightly wound and doesn’t seem to be taking anything approaching an easy way out.

Hey, what’s your favorite cop show?