Mayor of Kingstown

Brutal, bleak, relentless, thrilling, brilliant TV. The grubby underside of the American Dream laid bare. Superbly acted and filmed without pity. I've knocked one star off for the extremely irritating Diane West character whose virtue signalling is utterly extraneous.

My kinda show right here. Dark, gritty, smart, unnerving at times. Hopefully it gets renewed for season 2 cus Jeremy Renner is KILLING IT!! If you liked Sons of Anarchy, Breaking Bad, Bloodline, The Sopranos, or Escape at Danamora it definitely falls into that klan of shows that are very adult and dramatic and violent.

The best of what i have seen of Jeremy's works so far after Wind River. This show has its own dim atmosphere with intense events. No shred of boredom will enter while watching this series. The events are organised and well set in a really heated environment. Just mind-blowing.

Criminal dramas aren't something new. They are usually cheap to produce and are based on cliches. That's why majority of those are bad.

Mayor of Kindstown takes an interesting variation of a plot, and sticks to it, presenting a story that goes through the series, rather than a set of standalone episodes.

Pros: * good acting. Good for Jeremy Renner to switch from the weakest avenger to a strong hero himself.

* consistent story. Flawed characters stay true to themselves and consistent.

Cons: * some unnecessary dramatization. I find the role of hero's mother to be annoying and useless. Why would a prison fund lessons that provoke racial tensions among inmates?

* the concept "police ignores criminals for convenience" allows Deus Ex Machina to appear at any second, which is usually a cheap move. Season 1 avoided it, but I'm worried that the final developments in Season 2 would make it worse.

I'm excited to see where they are taking this. The general plot is a great idea and leaves open a kind of Sopranos-SOA-Justified-Shield-ish type vibe where it can go a lot of places and show a lot of angles. Ignore the negative reviews, anyone who writes off a show based on one episode, or the first 15 minutes of one episodes has no business leaving reviews because their opinion becomes invalid from a lack of depth.