You know... it's pretty interesting how much of Edinburgh was filtered out of this show. The remake so far is almost exactly the same story as the beginning half of the UK Low Winter Sun. Yet, the show's conveyance of a troubled and decayed Motor City is incredibly effective. It's also almost bizarrely amusing to see Mark Strong play the exact same character but with an American accent. If there is one thing the show deserves credit for, it's how well put together the atmosphere is. Although Mark Strong's American accent sounds a little bizarre at times.
I must admit that I was a little underwhelmed by the pilot. The show is just trying a little too hard. Especially with it's dialogue where lines are constantly uttered through gritted teeth as if to prove to the audience that the writers have thought through their show's moral complexities. Lennie James' grit was so over the top that it almost reached parody levels. Did someone just tell him to pretend he's a preacher like in There Will Be Blood? I keep waiting for some dialogue about milkshake or something...
But back to Low Winter Sun, it must be stressed that it's ok if a serious drama show comes across as a little black and white at the beginning. Actually that's how a lot of really effective but low-key realist dramas are written. In many shows, the complexity comes from how the plot and premise develops rather than how labyrinthine the premise is at the start. Really, when you think about it, complex stories rarely start off as that complex.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is about a spy looking for a Russian mole. Breaking Bad is about a chemistry teacher who decides to cook meth to make more money while trying to evade local drug dealers. The Pacific is about a group of soldiers who fights the Japanese in WWII. With these shows, the protagonist(s) are clear, their goals are clear, and their antagonist(s) are clear. The situation is also, at first, very clear. Something sucks, we have to do something to make it not suck. Once you establish that, you can very easily and effectively start to play around with morals ambiguity, anti-heroes, and protagonist/antagonist swaps. Low Winter Sun starts playing around with this from the get go. While this isn't always a bad treatment (House of Cards pull this off well), it's bad for a show that has a pretty simple plot like Low Winter Sun (unlike House of Cards).
I know AMC is trying to bill Low Winter Sun as this incredibly morally complex show but really the story is simple so far. Guy thinks a dirty cop killed his lover. Guy kills that dirty cop. Guy tries to cover. Done. That really is essentially the story so far. If you throw in all these side-switching lines so quickly after the setup you'll lose the audience pretty quickly because it'll make the audience question basic motivations right off the bat.
So did Frank really want to kill McCann or not? Joe (Lennie Jame's character) seems pretty solid in his belief that McCann needed to go... so why were there so much dialogue about morality being "like a strobe, back and forth"? You know righteous killings follow an actual moral code. It might be misguided and harsh, but the foundation is definitely there. Frank and Joe didn't kill Brendan McCann just for the lawls, they did it because they strongly believed it was the right thing. Yet why are we, only scenes after that, so suddenly tangled deeply in regret? What... just because Joe didn't tell Frank that Brendan was being investigated? I don't buy that. The path from righteous fury to regret needed to be explored a lot more than that. Also the conflict is very muddy at the moment. Immediately after Brendan's death, we're given multiple antagonists. The IA guy (who's Gale from Breaking Bad), the gang-banger (that guy from Generation Kill), and even Joe himself becomes shady. What exactly is Frank after? Who is stopping Frank from achieving what he wants? After the pilot, all I know is that he doesn't want to get caught. But there's (currently) so little danger of that it makes the emotional confrontation scenes seem a little early.
Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with stories that are a moral labyrinth. Actually, I've always thought that movies and comic books were too morally simplistic. I've always been a fan of TV because of how complex it is. Hell on Wheels, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Pacific, Homeland, Game of Thrones. Even a few mainstream network shows, like Person of Interest and Once Upon a Time, play around with moral ambiguity more than I would expect. But there is a way to develop that and Low Winter Sun just gets a little too ambitious too quickly. It's almost as if it's scared it wouldn't be able to stand up with Breaking Bad...
Well... it won't... no matter what any writer does. Breaking Bad is in it's twilight episodes after 4 seasons. Low Winter Sun just has a pilot. Stop trying to measure up to Breaking Bad and worry about developing your own story and complexities. Only by ignoring Breaking Bad can you, ironically, rise out of Breaking Bad's shadow.
