Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Briarpatch’ On USA Network, Where A Tough-As-Nails Investigator Returns To Her Hometown To Find Who Killed Her Sister

If you’ve never read any of Ross Thomas’ novels, they all deal in situations where weirdness and corruption are bubbling just under the surface of the towns his stories took place in. Andy Greenwald has been a fan of Thomas’ novels for years, and when he got a chance to adapt one of his novels for a series, he chose Briarpatch. But Greenwald made a few changes in order to change perspective and help build a visual sense of the novel’s world. Does it work?

BRIARPATCH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A sign for a barbecue joint shows a temperature of 98 degrees. A woman exits her apartment, goes down the stairs, and knocks on the door of a neighbor in the building.

The Gist: The woman is Felicity Dill (Michele Weaver), who is a police detective in San Bonifacio, TX, and also owns that apartment building. She is at that apartment to collect rent from Harold Snow (Timm Sharp), who comes to the door without any pants on. Felicity gets in her police cruiser to go to work… and it blows up.

We then see a small plane disembark in what a cab driver calls “St. Disgrace.” On it is Allegra Dill (Roasrio Dawson) in a white suit. She grew up there but hasn’t been back in 12 years. When she checks into her hotel, she’s met by A.D. Singe (Edi Gathegi), who was Felicity’s friend and estate attorney. Allegra, who was called “Pickle” and “Pick” during her days in town, is there to bury Felicity, whom she hasn’t seen in three years, but also wants to know who killed her. Singe shocks her by telling Allegra that Felicity took $1.7 million life insurance policy a few weeks before her death… and she’s the beneficiary.

One other thing Allegra wonders: How did Felicity afford to buy an apartment building that, while shitty, was still a $400,000 purchase? She lobbies the chief homicide detective, Calvin Strucker (Chris Mulkey) to let her into her sister’s apartment. She notices that there are no books, or tarragon, or anything else. She doesn’t think that’s real based on what she knows about Felicity and wants to know where she really lives. Strucker knows… and it seems like Captain Gene Colder (Brian Geraghty) also knows, seeing he was having an affair with Felicity and all.

Allegra is home for another reason, as we see when a tall man named Cyrus (Charles Parnell) visits. Allegra works as an investigator for Senator Joseph Ramirez (Gerardo Celasco) is looking for testimony from Jake Spivey (Jay R. Ferguson), an old friend of Allegra’s who was a Marine in Iraq but made a ton of money selling ill-gotten weapons to various rebel groups. If he testifies to the senator’s committee, he can get immunity and his money won’t be frozen. And that’s good, because those giraffes he owns won’t take care of themselves.

Strucker tells Allegra that he’ll take her to where her sister really lived. But as she’s about to get into his car, Singe comes out of nowhere and warns her in French. She actually takes her advice, and the next moment tells her why he warned her.

Our Take: Briarpatch was adapted by Andy Greenwald (former Grantland TV critic, who is now on the other side of the fence) from a novel by Ross Thomas. Greenwald flipped the gender of the main character and added a few other characters (like Kim Dickens’ ambitious police chief Eve Raytek, whom we see in the second episode), but most of what we see on the series is a sense of place that’s eerily reminiscent of shows like Breaking Bad.

That’s not a bad thing, but we do see Greenwald’s influences come into play, including Sam Esmail, who is one of the show’s EPs, and his old Legion boss Noah Hawley. The first season of Briarpatch, meant to be a closed-ended story as part of a larger Fargo-style anthology series, and it spends a lot of time trying to show the viewer that it’s noir, but a sunny, hot kind of noir set in a town where the temperature doesn’t seem to dip below 98 degrees.

We get asides that follow smaller characters around in a way that may or may not contribute to the story. There are long shots and extreme close-ups. There only seems to be one brand of beer consumed in the entire town. And there are a number of people we haven’t been introduced to yet, including Jake’s partner in gun-running, Clyde Brattle (Alan Cumming) or Colder’s sexy and scheming wife Lucretia (Christine Woods).

The story gets a bit confusing and muddled when Felicity’s murder and Allegra’s dealings with Jake and Clyde start to intersect. But we appreciate Greenwald’s desire to push the gas pedal on the quirk and insert it into the story in an organic way. Sharp is great as Snow, a weaselly hick who will find anyone’s dirty laundry if he’s paid to do so. And Dickens is a powerhouse as Raytek, whose goals are much higher than simply cleaning up the town.

But the show belongs to Dawson, and to a lesser extent, Ferguson. Dawson plays Allegra as someone who has had to cool herself down in order to reverse her downtrodden image, and that slow-boil rage comes through, especially in Dawson’s facial expressions; this is by far one of the top performances of her career. Ferguson, who most people know as Stan from Mad Men and whose currently in The Connors, goes the other way with Jake, who’s ostentatious in an “I’ll show ’em!” way that’s skeevy but charming all at the same time. Somehow Ferguson gets us on Spivey’s side, despite the misdeeds he’s committed, mainly because of that charm. The scenes between the two of them are the highlights of the first season.

Sex and Skin: Let’s just say that Allegra and the Senator have an… interesting relationship. It involves a lot of slapping and other violence. But it suits them both well, especially Allegra.

Parting Shot: After checking herself out of the hospital after Strucker’s car blows up, a beaten-up Allegra sees that the steak that has been there since she checked in is still outside her door, gathering flies; the staff is short and they haven’t gotten to it yet. Then, after she goes into her room, a tiger comes out and eats the rotting steak. Why is there a tiger? Did we mention that the local zoo was broken into and lots of wild animals escaped and are seen roaming the city? Yeah.

Sleeper Star: I want to use this to mention John Aylward, the veteran character actor who plays grizzled crime reporter Freddie Laffter. Aylward is 73, though he plays Laffter (whom everyone calls “Chuckles”… get it?) more decrepit than that. That means when he first played played Dr. Donald Anspaugh on ER in 1996 he was 49. I’m 48, for heaven’s sake; he looked like he was 65 back then.

Most Pilot-y Line: We’re not sure how San Bonifacio has its own newspaper, the one where Laffter works. It seems to be a pretty small town, and one that’s been laid low by changing times at that. The town has a wealthy grouch (played by Ed Asner) who wields power through that newspaper, but it feels like a very old-fashioned plot device.

Our Call: STREAM IT, mainly for Dawson and Ferguson, though the world that Greenwald has set up in Briarpatch is one that’s worth visiting for ten episodes, as well, despite the heavy hand on quirk.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Briarpatch On USANetwork.com