Wanted: Dead or Alive, (1958-1961)

In 1958, Steve McQueen emerged after some minor TV work to star in three seasons (94 episodes) of the CBS TV series, Wanted: Dead or Alive. There he developed the screen presence we came to expect of him in one dramatic role after another, from The Magnificent Seven (1960) to Junior Bonner (1972) and a final western, Tom Horn (1980). 

Readers here may remember that, among western actors, Randolph Scott is a favorite of mine, but Steve McQueen is a close second. It may be that the two of them have some things in common—not the least of which is a particular brand of coolness in their style. Physically they are obviously different. Scott is tall and lean and carries himself with what you could even call elegance. McQueen is shorter, with a compact build. When he walks, he strides.

Zen (2011)

Bit of a departure today, this is a review of the BBC series Zen, with Rufus Sewell as Italian police detective Aurelio Zen. The character is based on the novels of British crime fiction writer, Michael Dibdin. Unaware of the existence of this series, we came upon it at amazon, where it and countless other movies and TV shows are streamable free with amazon’s Prime service.

The series is set in modern-day Rome, where Sewell’s Zen is, one gathers, nearly the only resident not guilty of some crime, whether petty or capital. Merely by having a reputation for rectitude, he gets reluctantly involved by high placed government officials in cases of murder and kidnapping. And there’s always more at stake than simply solving the crime. Typically, he is being pressured to achieve results that are at complete cross purposes with each other, with his own life and career on the line no matter how things turn out.

Meanwhile, his personal life is nothing to brag about. He and his wife are separated and headed for divorce. Like the stereotypical Italian male, he lives with his mother. A leggy and stunning colleague (Caterina Marino), another casualty of marriage Italian style, has her eye on Zen. Almost diffident, he lets her make all the seductive moves.

Single-handed (2007-2008)

Made for Irish television by state broadcaster RTE, this cop drama is set in the far west of Ireland in Connemara, along the Atlantic Coast. It’s one of those places where most residents grew up there and never left home, and everybody knows everybody else’s business. Garda Sgt. Jack Driscoll (Owen McDonnell) has returned from Dublin to the seaside community of his youth, filling the shoes of his retired father who once held the same job.

Being Ireland, one gathers, there is plenty of history that’s been covered up in decades of secrecy. Wrongdoers, residents, and police have colluded in practicing a kind of law enforcement that’s somewhat outside the parameters of the law itself. Determined to do his job by the book, Driscoll uncovers a whole lot more dirty work than he bargained for when he agreed to take the job.

The first episode of Season 1 starts with a familiar set-up for anyone who has watched a lot of British crime drama. A body is discovered in the opening scenes and we get to know a series of local folks as Driscoll tries to sort out what happened. Though the death looks accidental, you expect him to eventually suss out what looks suspicious and finger a killer.

Something like that happens, but not until after his investigation discloses multiple layers of subterfuge. The story grows darker and darker as it takes one unexpected turn after another, eventually leading to a miasma of implications that involve Driscoll’s own family.

Owen McDonnell

Like many a modern series about crime detection, this one has a conflicted hero at the center. Jack Driscoll has a little problem with anger management and he apparently made trouble for himself while on the force in Dublin. For one thing, he seems to have been over-familiar with a colleague’s wife.

Wearing a uniform out here on the edge of nowhere, he is often portrayed as a lonely man, pitted against a community used to another kind of law officer. He rather easily welcomes into his isolation the affections of women who find themselves temporarily within his jurisdiction. He’s a gentleman about it, but a young woman in each of the first two seasons finds her way into his bed.

We like him because he tries so hard to do the right thing, to be honorable and above the corruption that tends to prevail everywhere around him. The one other law officer at his station, Sgt. Finbarr (David Herlihy) is unreliable and not accustomed to honoring a high standard of police work. A retired member of the local force (Sean McGinley) runs a tavern and is generally up to no good. Like a sphinx, Driscoll’s mother (Ruth McCabe) seems always sweet and pleasant enough, but long ago learned to pretend to know nothing and to reveal nothing of what she’s thinking.

There is a melancholy tone to the series that often underscores the sorrows that crimes uncover. In Season 2, Stephen Rea plays a long lost uncle who grew up in a brutal boarding school for boys. He is the adult survivor of indescribable abuse, and in Rea’s performance, his story breaks your heart. Meanwhile, Driscoll’s brightly colored police van travels the narrow, winding roads of Connemara. The brooding hills are as beautiful and forbidding as the Brontë’s moors.

Here are a couple scenes from Season 2, episode 3, with Owen McDonnell and Simone Lahbib.

Seasons 1 and 2 of Single-Handed are available in the U.S. at netflix. Two additional seasons were produced in 2009 and 2010. For more Overlooked Movies and TV, click on over to Todd Mason’s blog.

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Source: imdb.com

Coming up: Richard Wheeler, The Buffalo Commons

The Corner (2000)

Whether they’ve seen it or not, most readers here probably know of the HBO series The Wire, which ran 2002-2008. Written by David Simon and Ed Burns, that brilliant series was preceded by their raw look at inner-city drug addiction, The Corner. Also made for HBO, it was directed by Charles S. Dutton as a quasi-documentary telling of the story of a real-life family.

Like The Wire, the series is set in the mean streets of Baltimore. It’s the mid-1990s, after the introduction of crack has devastated the already-fragile social structure of black neighborhoods. The family at the center of the story is the Boyds. Fran and Gary, both addicts, have already split up. They have two sons, a teenager DeAndre and DeRodd, who is still a schoolboy.

DeAndre is already dealing on a “corner” with some of his buddies. They scorn the addicts who buy from them and have firearms stashed nearby should they be threatened by suppliers trying to move in on their territory. DeAndre has a girlfriend, Tyreeka. By series end, Tyreeka has given birth to their baby, and DeAndre has become a user himself.

The Boyds

The series strikes a delicate balance between portraying drug addicts as irresponsibly self-destructive and as plague victims. We see them as human beings with both strengths and weaknesses and often a wry sense of humor about themselves and their drug-induced predicaments. In flashbacks, we also see them in better times, gainfully employed, credit-worthy citizens. They are people whose lives have simply been derailed.

Gary is the most poignant example as an intelligent man with all-American aspirations, who once ran his own business and lived comfortably. The pull of recreational drugging first sucked his wife into addiction and then himself, as their relationship disintegrated. He laments the loss of that life but lacks the will to resist the siren call of the next high.

His wife Fran becomes a survivor, persistently waiting for an opening at a rehab and taking the 12 steps to recovery. After months of sobriety, she slips, but shows up at an NA meeting to start the steps over again. At the end, when we meet the real Fran Boyd in a series epilogue, she’s remained straight for several years.

Hack, first season (2002-03)

Bit of a departure today from the usual Tuesday western. We just finished the first season of the 2002-04 CBS series Hack. A police drama, it starred David Morse and Andre Braugher. The two men play former partners on the Philadelphia police force. Morse’s character, Olshansky, has been suspended for helping himself to some drug money, which in a weak moment he regards as “combat pay.” Braugher, as Washington, is at least equally culpable, but Olshansky abides by a code of honor that prevents him from cooperating with Internal Affairs and revealing what he knows about his former partner.

Olshansky has a family and is already separated from his wife as the series starts. A little late, he tries to salvage the marriage and rebuild a relationship with his young son (Matthew Borish). To make up for lost income, he takes a job as a cab driver, or “hack.”

A basically decent man, he’s also trying to recover a sense of self-respect, while suffering a load of Catholic guilt for screwing up his life. In particular, he has disappointed his father, a former cop who is shamed by his son’s dishonorable discharge from the police force. It doesn’t help that the man is a drunk and a past perpetrator of domestic violence.

David Morse, Andre Braugher

In a supporting role is George Dzundza as Father Tom, the priest of an inner city parish and a lifelong friend of Olshansky. He has some problems of his own, including a history of gambling debts and drinking. Still, he’s Olshansky’s conscience as the former cop labors to set his life right.

Each week’s episode puts someone in Olshansky’s cab who is in desperate need of a helping hand. As a seasoned cop who knows how things get done in the city, especially on the shady side of the law, Olshansky becomes involved. A newspaper columnist writes him up as a “dirty cop” trying to redeem himself with good deeds. Olshansky simply can’t stay out of somebody else’s trouble.

George Dzundza

Typically, he enlists the help of his former partner, Washington, to do the detective work he’d be able to do himself if he were still on the force. There’s also Morse’s sheer physical presence and his ability to really get rough when the situation calls for it. Both aspects of the plot are hugely satisfying, as the scenes between the two men bristle with fine dialogue from creator/writer David Koepp, and the physical violence is often explosive and well justified.

There is fine ensemble acting throughout, with guest appearances by John Heard, Martha Plimpton, Lindsay Crouse, and Bebe Neuwirth. The writing also avoids a lot of clichés common to the genre. Heather, Olshansky’s wife (Donna Murphy), is not the shrill adversary intent on avenging every grievance on her former husband. She still loves him, she says; she just can’t trust him. 

Matthew Borish

The scripts also focus on Olshansky’s struggle to be the loving father that his own father never was to him. Morse and the boy’s scenes together are often difficult and touching.

We never really know until the final episode what happened during the drug bust that ended Olshansky’s career. We also never learn until then what he may be covering up about his partner, Washington—or for that matter the true character of the man himself. The series slowly reveals his behavior as suspect, but even to the end, while there are revelations about Washington, one can’t be sure what to believe.

Bebe Neuwirth

It’s commercial TV, and commercials drive me nuts, so I never even heard of the show when it was running. I stumbled across it at netflix, where it can be streamed in HD (DVDs do not seem to be currently available). Watching a couple episodes a night, I found its style of storytelling a great pleasure, for it tackles issues that you don’t find in the usual cop show—issues of integrity, responsibility, friendship, trust, intimacy, character, and self-respect.

While it deals often with the dark underbelly of city life, it does not glamorize it, and it refuses to get cynical in the face of it. You see ordinary people attempting to live decent and honorable lives, always against the odds. And it’s gratifying to find a hero who is flawed but still a credible moral center in the crime-infested world he inhabits.

For more Overlooked Movies and TV, click on over to Todd Mason's blog, Sweet Freedom.

Coming up: Cy Warman, Frontier Stories (1897)