By the time FX’s neo-Western series “Justified” hung up its signature Stetson in 2015, it almost instantly became regarded as a masterfully executed product of its time.
The pop culture landscape was speedily evolving. By then, the Black record-label melodrama “Empire” had become a major hit for Fox and a weekly trending topic on Twitter. The Emmys had also finally honored the obvious talent of Black women like Viola Davis and Regina King for their respective roles on “How to Get Away With Murder” and “American Crime.” And millennials were on the cusp of surpassing boomers as the largest generation in the U.S., often dissenting from mainstream TV discussions with their own perspectives on social media.
But Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), the self-principled white marshal at the center of “Justified,” had largely managed to evade armchair criticism while wrangling criminals across Kentucky. Chalk it up to author Elmore Leonard’s gripping Raylan Givens book series, published from the 1990s to the 2010s. Or Olyphant’s seemingly effortless melding of actor and character.
Or the brilliant writing and direction from talent like Michael Dinner and Dave Andron, and world-building brought to life by a wonderful array of actors who played characters ranging from law enforcers and law breakers to the attorneys and other shady folks in the middle. Maybe, though, because it was just that good.
In retrospect, “Justified” remains so. But we’re now eight years from its finale, dog years if we go by the pop culture clock. None of the best shows on TV right now is about a white lawman canvassing a mostly white town, a specificity that comes with hillbilly assumptions — some that are valid.
“Copaganda” is also now more scrutinized than ever, particularly in the wake of the real-life police killings of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd and others. Figures like Raylan have earned their lack of trustworthiness.
So, as intriguing as a continuation of the “Justified” brand sounded in theory, there was a lot to be nervous about in 2023. Even the way we talk about pop culture has shifted, so you never really know how something will be received. But thankfully, the folks behind “Justified: City Primeval,” based on Leonard’s 1980 novel “City Primeval,” seem to be attuned to all of this. The series premieres Tuesday on FX.
The new story is a fascinating mix of old-school and edgy, moving Raylan ahead 15 years to Detroit, “one of the Blackest cities in the country,” as co-star Aunjanue Ellis told The New York Times.
That’s an important aspect of this new setting. If done well, it could challenge Raylan and open up opportunities for equally complex stories involving Black characters on all sides of the law. They would still contend with their own dealings and relationships, as well as infinite white law enforcement, but now also with this cowboy hat-wearing dude in town.
Thankfully, it’s done well.
Dinner, who now serves as a showrunner with Andron on “City Primeval,” seems relieved when I tell him this. As it terms out, I wasn’t the only one hesitant about returning to the world of “Justified.”
“We feel we stuck the landing whatever it was, six, seven years ago,” he said about the first “Justified” series when he jumped on a call with me. “We had trepidation about going back into it. I also feel it’s a different thing. It’s both trying to protect the show that we did and the character that Tim did. But it’s its own story.”
It is. Raylan isn’t actually in the “City Primeval” book. Dinner and others involved in the production — including Leonard’s estate (the author died in 2013), as well as FX, Sony and Olyphant, who’s an executive producer on the new series — brought the character into the story with this adaptation.
It began only a few years after the first series ended, and it was a gamble that paid off. That’s partly because it never feels like it’s just a continuation of Raylan’s journey for the sake of returning to, as Dinner put it, “Elmore Leonard’s sandbox” that he and the others love so much.
What sets it apart from other series that have tried and failed to revive beloved characters is its demonstration of actual intention. Detroit, for one, puts Raylan in a whole other minefield culturally, aesthetically and professionally.
“Well, look, it’s not in the hills of Kentucky,” Dinner said.
He considers Detroit its own character on the show, which should be immediately obvious to an audience. Even its deep color palette (lots of blue and brown hues) gives off its own swagger and machinations, depending on who’s in the scene. Detroit is also the thing that Raylan continues to react to — the people, the lawful (and unlawful) terrain, the racial dynamic.
“I look at [‘Justified’] as the first chapter of Raylan’s life, which is the story about you can’t go home again,” Dinner said. “This is a story about — it’s the second chapter of his life. The world’s moved on. He’s kind of a walking anachronism and he goes into this world of Detroit.”
And right away, Raylan encounters people like Sweety (Vondie Curtis-Hall), an aging bar owner/criminal/former “monster bass player”/romantic partner trying to do one last run with fellow convict Clement Mansell (Boyd Holbrook) before he hangs it all up.
Sweety is also, as Dinner sees it, “a shirttail uncle” to Ellis’ sharp-tongued criminal defense attorney Carolyn, with whom Raylan has an increasingly complicated relationship. The trio makes for a crackling three-hander that also thrilled the showrunner, who’d never seen a dynamic like this before.
Dinner put it best when talking about the characters in this story: “Everybody’s working at an angle.” Or several, as it often turns out. They’re also fallible, deeply human characters with their own contradictions, vulnerabilities and dubious entanglements.
But they’re all very, very good at their jobs, even if their actions are dangerous or ill-fated. They know their way around a jam, or know whom to call to get around it.
Black characters like these certainly didn’t have as much of a presence in the first “Justified” series, which raised concerns about how they would fit into what was previously an overwhelmingly white show.
But those concerns were unwarranted. Because characters like Carolyn and Sweety are drawn and performed with the same complexity and honesty as their counterparts in both series. Their conversations with each other and those around them also feel real.
Dinner and the rest of the team were very pointed about that.
“Well, look, here’s the thing: How can you do a story about Detroit without having characters who are Black?” Dinner said.
True. And it’s worth noting that Leonard lived in Detroit when he began his writing career. So, while he was white, he at least had some knowledge of the people there. But there were some necessary tweaks to help make them even more relevant today.
“I’ll be really honest, Sweety in the book is Black,” Dinner told me. “Carolyn is not. That was a conscious decision on our part because we thought it would be great if Carolyn and Sweety represent this side of Detroit.”
While that could run the risk of reducing these Black characters to mere foils of the white protagonist, “City Primeval” avoids that.
“It was really a matter of, how can we get full characters?” Dinner went on. “We expanded his role. We made her a different character in the book. We thought that was interesting.”
It makes an exchange like the one in the first episode when Carolyn cross-examines Raylan about leaving her client, a young Black man, locked inside a hot car that much more striking.
“We didn’t hang a flag on all this stuff,” Dinner said, “but certainly it’s also a story about Black and white relations in a complicated world that we’re living in right now.”
Dinner said the team didn’t want the story to come off as “pedantic” about race, but admitted it’s inherent to both the series and Leonard’s work.
“I don’t know if the world’s changed, but people are certainly more aware that the world is a changing world,” he said. “It’s tough to do a story about law enforcement with what we’ve seen and experienced over the last six, seven, eight, nine years.”
Dinner quickly added a necessary thought: “Not that things didn’t happen before,” he said. “But we wanted to tell that story without hanging a flag on it.”
The story and characters, though, often end up being in direct conversation with our flawed reality. There are scenes like the aforementioned exchange between Carolyn and Raylan that come to inform both characters’ objectives and humanity.
There’s also the moment we meet Sweety, who Dinner considers “the emotional center of this piece.” Raylan and Detective Wendell Robinson (Victor Williams), who is Black, go to Sweety’s bar to ask him about a gun that was used in a high-profile double homicide — the crime that kicks off the narrative — and the owner saunters from the back.
Donning a bandana, a gold chain and a T-shirt underneath an open blue button-up, he cuts to the chase by pulling out his own collection of arms, all properly registered, and asks the two gentlemen: “Y’all got a permit to carry?”
It’s the way he reminds two members of law enforcement, particularly Raylan, that they’re in his space and that they too can be questioned that makes moments like this so indelible. Because they feel honest and real.
Part of that comes from the fact that Curtis-Hall was actually born and raised in Detroit himself. Joining the “City Primeval” cast, even amid the conversation around copaganda, was for him a no-brainer.
“Because when I started reading the series, it was really all about the characters and their humanity — and ‘what is the verisimilitude of this arena?’” he told me on a separate video call. “You got the spirit of Elmore Leonard, which is fantastic. And you’ve got Detroit, which is a predominantly Black city.”
And its depiction also felt true to him. “There was a lot of white flight when I was growing up, and so Detroit largely became a city of Black folks,” he said. “So, I think the representation of how we function in the world, nuanced — it’s not Black and white in terms of how we deal with each other, how we deal with the majority.”
Curtis-Hall brings it back to their humanity, which he said is evident in both Leonard’s material as well as this adaptation. He also credits his character’s journey with Carolyn, which becomes more and more fraught as the stakes rise for each of them.
“It’s that kind of stuff that drew me to the truth of — they’re not caricatures,” the actor said. “It’s human beings. That’s the beauty of this show. That’s the beauty of, as a Black actor, being able to have other Black folks around you that are true characters displaying the nuances of life.”
Those other Black folks include people like writer and producer Eisa Davis and consulting producer and notable author Walter Mosley, who were in the room with Dinner and the rest of the team to give authenticity to the story.
Moments like when Carolyn’s ex-husband (Amin Joseph) rightfully questions her about a particularly knotty imbroglio that crosses racial lines immediately feel like they come from a sincere place. Dinner helped make sure of that.
“I kind of love that scene,” Dinner said about that moment between Carolyn and her ex. “That’s all an invention. That didn’t exist in the book. The book was written 43 years ago. The book itself has fantastic stuff in it, but needs updating.”
This all comes back to intent. That’s one of the things that separates the good from the better offerings that return to a known character. The former seem to have no sense of where they fit in today’s world, or any interest in finding out. The latter are dead-set on asking the question and exploring why.
“We needed to do the right thing for the book because it was an important book in Elmore’s canon, but also do the right thing for the show and for the time,” Dinner said. “We had a lot of conversations about these characters — who they were, the world they’re living in right now.”
Those dialogues included the Black voices in the writers room.
“There were eight of us — three Black writers, including Eisa Davis and the great Walter Mosley,” Dinner said. “He kept us honest. We wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing for the community and for Detroit. We wanted to make sure we did it right.”
At the end of the day, though, what makes a show great extends far beyond how honestly it treats its Black characters or depicts its very Black setting. While those things are crucial, “City Primeval” also still needs to be good TV.
Dinner recalled when he had shot and finished the director’s cut of the pilot episode and Andron asked what he thought of it. He responded, with full confidence, “pretty damn entertaining.” It is indeed.
TV and film writers and actors, including those who worked on “Justified: City Primeval,” are on strike over fair pay and working conditions in the streaming era.