JUSTIFIED; gunslingin' swagger

By Dan Owen / July 1, 2011

WRITER: Graham Yost (based on a short story by Elmore Leonard) DIRECTOR: Michael Dinner CAST: Timothy Olyphant, Nick Searcy, Jacob Pitts, Erica Tazel, Joelle Carter, Walton Goggins, Damon Herriman, Natalie Zea, Matt Craven, Peter Greene & Doug E. Doug

My childhood memories of American television mostly take place in pastoral areas of the USA. The A-Team, Dallas, Knight Rider, The Dukes Of Hazzard, The Fall Guy; in each the countryside were backdrops of cacti, never-ending roads, deserts, creeks, pickup trucks, good ol' boys, moonshine and Stetsons. At some point in the late-'80s, US television started to cling to its cosmopolitan coasts for more urban drama, but trends appear to be reversing with True Blood (Louisiana), Breaking Bad (New Mexico) and now Justified (Kentucky) restoring a rural view of America again. There's just something more romantic, dangerous and culturally pure about that. Justified (Five USA, Wednesdays @10pm) stars Timothy Olyphant (Go, Die Hard 4.0) as US Marshall Raylan Givens, a character who appeared in three Elmore Leonard stories (Pronto, Riding The Rap and Fire In The Hole), the latter of which is also the inspiration for this pilot. Raylan's a handsome, charming lawman with a lethal quick-draw and old-fashioned attitude when it comes to dispensing justice. The opening scene finds him blowing away a criminal in a public area of Miami, for failing to "get out of Dodge" after a 24-hour deadline, and the ensuing bad publicity results in a transfer to his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky, under the care of academy pal Chief Deputy Art Mullen (Nick Searcy.) Raylan's first case involved Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), a childhood friend he used to work down a coal mine with, who has since fallen in with white supremacists and turned to a life of crime: currently blowing up churches with a bazooka to distract small-town cops while he robs their local bank. Can Raylon bring his old buddy to justice for his crimes, given the history they share together?

"Fire In The Hole" lifts dialogue and plot from the Elmore Leonard source material, so it'll be interesting to see if showrunner Graham Yost (Speed, Band Of Brothers) and his team prove capable of mimicking Leonard's style for future episodes of their own. Olyphant's been a favourite of mine since his performance in Go (although I missed his career-defining role in HBO's western Deadwood) and a lot of weight is clearly on his shoulders with this series. He proves more than capable as a gun-slinging lead, making an indelible impression as the kind of no-nonsense lawman born in the wrong era, whose investigations tend to leave a trail of dead bodies if shootouts are "justified" (i.e. someone pulls their weapon first.) Olyphant's charismatic and easy to engage with, proving himself the main reason to stick around to see where this show leads. It's also refreshing that he's not the anti-hero type whose methods cause controversy, more a quieter Yankie version of Life On Mars' brutish Gene Hunt -- with a sidearm and even lower tolerance levels. Let's hope Justified isn't a show where a great central performance is left to twist in the breeze because the storytelling's not there to back it up.