Review – Terriers
Terriers – FX – 10:00pm Wednesday – USA
Terriers is the latest gritty guy drama to appear on gritty guy cable network FX, home of gritty guy dramas Sons Of Anarchy, Rescue Me and Justified, along with gritty guy comedies like Louie, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and The League. While Terriers isn’t nearly as grit-tastic as some of those shows, it does star Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James as two unshaven scruffy dropkicks trying to make a buck in this tough old world.
Logue and Raymond-James play Hank & Britt, a pair of private investigators with women issues but a bright outlook on life. They’re the sort of long-time partners who don’t so much bicker with each other but banter like real friends would. Hank is an ex-detective, ex-drunk with an ex-wife but he tries not to let it get him down. Logue has made a habit of playing scruffy go-nowhere types with a positive outlook, and basically delivers much the same performance that saw him through The Knights Of Prosperity. Raymond-James plays Britt as a guy who hasn’t yet grown up, but trusts his instincts and looks after those close to him.
They make for a pair of affable leads and are surrounded by a competent collection of actors playing the various girlfriends, ex-wives and ex-partners that you’d expect to show up around the edges. The big case these two have to crack in the pilot features a missing girl, a sex-tape and a property scam, and the particulars of the plot are a bit of a yawn; it’s the execution which really kicks Terriers into something more than it initially seems. Terriers is a funny show, Logue & Raymond-James work great together, but you can’t help but think they might have been better served with a half-hour dramedy as private detective work tends to drag after an hour, no matter how well crafted it is.
Terriers really is the ultimate ‘benefit of the doubt’ show. An amusing show about private detectives solving a crime of the week doesn’t hold all that much appeal to me. Usually it would be the sort of show that you could come across while flicking channels and not be too unhappy about finding it. It doesn’t tend to be the sort of show you make any sort of long term investment in. However, we’re not dealing with a network like TNT or USA here. This probably isn’t going to be another case of Leverage, Covert Affairs, Rizzoli & Isles, or the similarly themed Psych – where the pieces all reset for the next episode’s story of the week. This is FX, and the last drama they brought into this world was Justified, which proved beyond all measure of a doubt that you can beautifully marry the story of the week dynamic with a compelling ongoing story to produce fantastic television.
As the first episode drew to a close Terriers dropped some seeds for an ongoing storyline and it’s an encouraging moment. Couple the involvement of FX, a network that produces, at worst, above average dramas, with the presence of Executive Producer Shawn Ryan, who also produced FX’s flagship series The Shield, and it feels like you’re in safe hands. Surely this is enough to suggest that the well made and amusing Terriers can grow from a competent crime-of-the-week to a must watch drama just as Justified did. So far Terriers hasn’t fully blown me away, but it’s done more than enough to earn a few look-ins.
Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Good
