Low Winter Sun (Season 1)

Is it just me, but all my reviews so far start with a small comment where I explain myself about why I am doing the review on whatever the damn review is about? OK, it is easy to get such comment trend when there are only two reviews on my name, but whatever…

My review this week is about a TV show. The issue here is that it is not about a fantasy or science fiction television show! Yes, I know, shocking! In reality, all of the members of POPinions have diverse tastes in music, fiction and television/movies and that will be reflected in our reviews, as you can imagine.

For me, what really works is genre fiction. Be it fantasy, science fiction or crime fiction. With this, after this lengthy explanation, I present you Low Winter Sun.

Low Winter Sun Logo

For those of you that watched the last season of Breaking Bad on AMC, you have seen a lot of advertising to this show. Actually, I think AMC was trying to have Low Winter Sun to fill the shoes of Breaking Bad. If that was the objective, I have to say Low Winter Sun fails miserably.

Low Winter Sun is another of those American shows adapted from UK television series. In this case (and this is actually rare on my part, since I’m a fan of UK shows), I have not watched the UK counterpart of Low Winter Sun, so I’m incapable of making comparisons between the two, but I have watched a lot of crime shows from both sides of the Atlantic and I’m fully capable of make a call on this one: Low Winter Sun is a median show with a good premise, but an average execution.

Low Winter Sun Cast

During the 10 hour-long episodes that comprise the first season of Low Winter Sun, we follow the story of Frank Agnew, a Detroit PD Homicide Detective that we first find in his darkest moment. Convinced one of his fellow Homicides Detective killed his girlfriend, he joins another cop, Joe Geddes, to kill him. In the aftermath of this act, Agnew discovers that both his victim and Geddes are being investigated for corruption and, when the body of his victim is found in his car, left underwater by Agnew and Geddes with the objective of faking a suicide, there is another body in the trunk of the car. As events unfold, we watch as Agnew and Geddes try to cover their tracks as Simon Boyd investigate the corruption of their division up to the climatic finale of the show.

The premise of Low Winter Sun is interesting. For starters, is a type of crime show that seldom I've seen done: the detective is also the killer. The whole premise of the show is trying to see if Agnew will pull out of this mess alive and free. The backdrop of Detroit, with the fallout of the car industry, is also a perfect choice in this day and age. I have to say that the show kept me going for most of the 10 episodes without big complaints in terms of plot until the finale. There, and without entering the realm of spoilers, we have a deus ex machina resolution and characters changing their personality in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, that ruined the rest of the show for me, in the same way the conclusion of Lost made me question the amazing show it was for most of its run.

Something that completely surprised me too was the lack of music in the show. Again, Detroit is one of the musical centers of the United States: it was one of the places where the blues and jazz were nurtured by great musicians and, on the other hand, it is a blooming city in terms of hip hop and rap. If you discard the intro, with blues singer Bettye LaVette, that background was completely absent from the show. In a way, the Detroit backdrop is just a name in the show and one could replace it by any other big city in the country and it would feel the same.

There are other issues with the show that pulled me out of it. The major one was the casting: in a Detroit backdrop where we have demographics dominated by African American (about 83% of the total population), most of the cast is white. In terms of cast, I was expecting something similar to what I’ve seen in The Wire, were the casting followed the logic presented by the demographics. It may not mean a lot, but it broke the illusion of reality for me, in this case.

This does not mean that the casting was bad. Far from it, I think it is one of the high points of the show. What I mean by this is that there are terrific actors in this show and they play their part perfectly, even when the plot takes a weird turn at the end. From all of them, I have to talk about a couple, as follows:

Frank Agnew (Mark Strong) is a Homicide Detective in the Detroit PD. The first shot he see of him is he crying, crying because he is about to abandon everything he accepted as right: he is about to commit murder. An important note on the casting is that Mark Strong was cast in the same role for the UK mini-series too. That may contribute to his great performance and his interactions with other actors are nothing less than excellent.

Joe Geddes (Lennie James) is also a Homicide Detective for the Detroit PD. Geddes was the mastermind behind the murder that triggers the beginning of this story and, as the plot progresses, we can see that he had ulterior motives and lied to Agnew to get it done. James, whom I previously knew from Jericho, has a complex character in his hands and, sometimes, I get the impression he cannot fill the shoes completely. Either way, he does enough to sell Geddes to the audience.

Damon (James Ransone) and Maya Callis (Sprague Grayden) are the main characters of a side-plot within the show that barely entwines with the main plot of the show. They are wannabe criminal kingpins that we follow as they try to become big players in Detroit’s underworld. For the most part, I feel Damon and Maya’s story exists only for the sake of filling time and justifies the deus ex machine that we have at the end of the season and to, most likely, justify a future plot in subsequent seasons. As for the casting choices, I feel that while Grayden gives a convinced performance, Ransone has an average presence in the show, without nothing worth mention. 

Simon Boyd (David Costabile) is the Internal Affairs Detective in charge of the corruption investigation that makes Agnew and Geddes cover up more complicated. I have bittersweet feeling about this character and Costabile performance. Boyd’s character fluctuates between interesting and annoying. Apart from the murder perpetrated by Agnew and Geddes, Boyd was intended to be the major drive for the plot. In reality, Boyd ends up to be a pathetic character that does nothing at all during the show, except a less than convincing argument at the end linking Geddes and Agnew to the murder. This reflects on Costabile performance that, given the script, could not do more than what he did, even if he is constantly with a stupid, half-surprised half-sarcastic expression in his face.

Brendan McCann (Michael McGrady) is the victim. His airtime during the show is close to that of a guest star, but his presence on the story is constant. McCann is a corrupt cop, not only by himself, but because he corrupts others: there is a suggestion that Geddes was corrupted by him and that this ended up corrupting Agnew. Since his airtime is so short, I don’t have nothing to point at McGrady’s performance; I would had that being drunk and being dead are the main emotions he has and that is not particularly hard to do in acting. 

In conclusion, Low Winter Sun is an average show that was trying to fill the shows of one of the best shows ever (Breaking Bad). I don’t feel I wasted my time and do not anticipate a second season for this show, but since the main plot of this season is fully resolved, it may be a reasonable option for a lazy weekend.

Plot 3/5

Low Winter Sun has, like I said above, an interesting premise with an interesting setting, but its final episodes ruined the plot and felt rushed and a little bit like deus ex machina.

Visual 3/5

Though the cinematography of the show is the usual for these type of shows, with an evident attempt to look real, I would argue that it would profit if the show and lights were darker, with more greys and stronger blacks and whites. This is a personal opinion and it is based only in my belief that the overall tone of the show asked for it.

Sound 2/5

As I explained above, I expected a lot for the soundtrack of this show. I will not repeat myself, but I will say that, with the exception of the intro of each episode, the soundtrack fails miserably.

Performances 4/5

Apart from the weird absence of an African American dominated cast and Lennie James underachieving performance, the casting does an amazing job for this show. Apart from the main characters (in particular Mark Strong), I would like to praise Athena Karkanis, playing a Arab American Homicide Detective, and Ron Cephas Jones in the role of a criminal mogul.

Final Score 12/20

Overall, Low Winter Sun is an average show mainly because of its plot and the soundtrack, but it serves good to excellent performances from his cast during the 10 hour-long episodes that comprise the first season.