Just when I think TV is safe for happy shows again, “American Rust” (Sundays, Showtime) comes along and pulls me back into the grim and gritty. Set in fictional Buell, Pa., either five or 15 years ago (as a news clip shows Hillary Clinton making a run at the presidency), the miniseries seems to take up a challenge from “Mare of Easttown.”
If you think the Philly area is rough, check out this town that — as police chief Del Harris (Jeff Daniels) tells a visitor — “is closer to West Virginia than it is to Pittsburgh.”
(This review contains light spoilers about episode one.)
Death in a dying town
“American Rust” peppers in exposition like this to set the stage. A judge smoothly works the county’s unemployment numbers into the parole sentencing of good-kid-in-bad-times Billy Poe (Alex Neustaedter) for a bar fight.
“American Rust” (2021)
Sundays, Showtime; 9 episodes (the first has aired, and is available for free)
Creator: Dan Futterman, based on the novel by Philipp Meyer
Stars: Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, Alex Neustaedter
Creator Dan Futterman (who adapts Philipp Meyer’s 2009 novel) also oversaw “Gracepoint” (2014), so he’s familiar with small-town murder-mystery beats. But that was more of a procedural whodunit. “Rust” is more akin to “Bellevue” and the aforementioned “Mare”: It’s so steeped in the tragedy of a near-dead town that the dead body is almost an afterthought.
Filmed in Pittsburgh and Donora, Pa., “Rust” is a visual trip through a once-thriving steel town the same way “The Walking Dead” displays decaying south Georgia. It’s gorgeously sad to look at.
In the premiere episode, “The Mill,” we see how people take on the character of their town — in bad ways. Chief Harris is getting hooked on PTSD meds. Billy’s mom Grace (Maura Tierney) and her coworkers at the sewing factory wonder if their lives qualify as “living.”
Gallows humor for Buell
The time and place make it plausible that former star quarterback Billy has stuck around Buell – as an assistant coach for the team – because he’s in love (but firmly in the closet) with his best friend Isaac (David Alvarez).
When he’s on screen, Billy is the Tim Riggins of what plays like a premium-cable “Friday Night Lights.” Neustaedter has swoony star quality (but then again, we thought that of Taylor Kitsch). He’s the soft-spoken heart of the show.
Daniels and Tierney get the showier scenes – and one-liners that are refreshing even if it’s gallows humor about the doomed town. The chief tells his one reliable deputy, Steve (Rob Yang), not to wander onto his land in a deer costume.
Morality play against an immoral backdrop
Harris is forever balancing what’s right with what’s on the books. He hunts out of season on his own land because it’s a victimless crime. He stands by and allows locals to use scare tactics to break up an auction on foreclosed property – including that of Grace, whom he loves although she is technically still married to deadbeat Virgil (Mark Pellegrino).
But the chief’s biggest challenge is posed by the body in the mill. A clue points to Billy being the killer, but Harris knows Billy is a good kid, plus he loves Billy’s mom. And the world is probably better off without the victim.
“Rust” aims to explore the moral and situational gray areas probed in the murder-oriented Woody Allen films of this century – I’m thinking of “Match Point,” “Cassandra’s Dream” and “Irrational Man.”
I suspect it will also become a murder-mystery (if only because it’d be so lame if Billy actually did it), but it isn’t yet.
I’m not sure if Futterman’s series will have something fresh to say about how right and wrong get skewed when the whole backdrop is “wrong.” But I suspect “American Rust” will at least say it well.