Review: The Return of Raylan Givens in ‘Justified: City Primeval’

“We dug coal together.” That’s how Justified ended its six-season run, with a line so perfect that to dare to reboot the show is to risk tarnishing the memory of the original run’s closing moment. Justified: City Primeval is not only bold enough to take that risk, it also threatens to deliver on it. While only the first two episodes have aired thus far, there can be no denying what a tremendous start the show is off to. 

The original series is one that is close to my heart. I was born in Kentucky, and beyond the excellent writing, directing, and the fabulous cast (led by Timothy Olyphant as the troubled US Marshal Raylan Givens—in one of the all-time great laconic performances), I was taken by how well the show’s creators presented the bluegrass state as not just a place full of hillbillies and meth heads (not that there weren’t some of those too), but also of true professionals and good people as well. 

Like anyone who sees a show based on a place they are from, you know home when you see it. Justified was home to me. And in that final episode when Olyphant nails that final line while sitting across from Walton Goggins (in a career-best performance as Givens’ frenemy Boyd Crowder) I breathed a deep sigh full of both satisfaction and relief. They stuck the landing, I thought. And while there is always a tendency to want more of something you love, when it comes to great art, it’s often best to leave far more than well enough alone. 

Even so, any trepidation I might have felt when I heard about the story of Marshall Givens being brought back to television, I also was quietly giddy about its prospects. The folks behind the camera and in front had a long time to marinate on Primeval City, and the steak has been served with panache. In line with the previous series’ slow burn style, Justified: City Primeval is a show that you have to let yourself sink into. Nothing is rushed, there’s certainly a plot, but it’s more interested in character than machinations, and the dialogue (and its delivery) is to be greatly savored. 

Because Goggins was so electric as Boyd Crowder in the first series, I’ve never felt that Olyphant got the full credit he deserved for leading the show. Even simple lines like “I don’t think that was necessary, but okay” (delivered when a police officer kicks a compliant suspect down the stairs), roll off Olyphant’s tongue in such a droll manner that one can’t help but chuckle at words that might have read blandly on the page. 

I’m realizing now that I’m kind of burying the lead on the key difference in Justified series one and City Primeval. The first iteration of the show was about Raylan Givens being reassigned to Kentucky from Florida. Givens had no desire to take part in this forced homecoming (many a ghost was confronted from his upbringing), and spent six seasons trying to resolve the case of the Crowder crime ring so he could get the hell out of Kentucky and back to Miami. 

City Primeval turns that notion on its head. This time, our wide-brimmed hat wearing marshal (it’s amazing how easily Olyphant pulls off that chapeau) is on a road trip with his 15-year-old daughter Willa (played by Olyphant’s own daughter, Vivian) when he gets embroiled in an assassination attempt on a Detroit judge (played profanely by the always welcome Keith David). This time Givens wants to get the hell out of Detroit and get back to Miami with Willa, but just as he thinks the case is resolved, the show takes a grim turn when the clear villain of City Primeval, Mansell (a dastardly charming Boyd Holbrook) commits a double murder that extends the life of the case and of Givens’ stay in the motor city.

The character of Raylan Givens was created by the great Detroit crime writer Elmore Leonard, and City Primeval is a bit of a fish out of water story versus Justified’s all too familiar (for Raylan) locale. Taking Givens and placing him in Detroit (as a former Michigan resident, it’s a place I know well) isn’t just a gritty grace note played in the direction of Leonard’s origins, it also gives the viewer the opportunity to see a new city through Givens’ eyes–a city that has suffered greatly due to white flight and the boom or bust economy based around the automotive industry. At its 1950 peak, Detroit had a population of more than 1.8 million people. Currently, the city has just over 630,000 residents. 

In just the first two episodes you can see the damage the population drop has had on a city built for nearly two million people. Now having barely a third of its peak population, there are areas of Detroit that are run down and ghostly, and it’s a hard city to manage from a local government perspective. City Primeval digs into these issues early, but not in a heavy-handed way. 

For those who aren’t familiar with Detroit, Givens’ acts as our inexperienced travel guide, showing us what others might look away from. For those who live in Detroit (a place I have visited many times), I suspect they will recognize the authenticity of the show’s rendering.All that being said, just as the original series showcased the challenges of a poor state like Kentucky (particularly Harlan County) while being very entertaining in an insinuating fashion, that quality still holds true in City Primeval. 

The role of the now silver-haired marshal (my wife called him “Graylan Givens”) still fits Olyphant like a glove. I’ve often thought that Olyphant, so strikingly handsome, uniquely talented, and possessing a great facility for both comedy and drama, should have had a bigger career. But then, when I realized that Olyphant has played not one, but two iconic roles in his career (Givens and Sheriff Bullock in Deadwood) I realized that most actors, however talented, don’t even get one signature role. It would seem that whenever Olyphant dons a cowboy hat, he is at home. Whether playing a character in the modern world or in the 19th century. I suppose that will have to do, and it does rather nicely. 

Much like the Deadwood movie, City Primeval gives us at least one more shot to savor Olyphant in his perfectly-suited element. Based on what I’ve seen so far, when it comes to City Primeval, I can’t wait for what comes next.

Justified: City Primeval airs weekly on FX and Hulu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6KEgWSFfaE