Marshal law

• Published date: 12 September 2023
• Publication title: Signal

YOU’LL never leave Harlan alive, says the song, but Raylan Givens managed it. The Stetson-wearing deputy, protagonist of the inexcusably overlooked crime drama Justified, made it out after six seasons of chasing outlaws through eastern Kentucky’s hills and hollers. A decade later, the hat is back. Good news: it still fits

If you haven’t watched Justified, then you haven’t seen Timothy Olyphant in the role he was born for. First appearing in a series of Elmore Leonard novellas, Givens is the ‘‘cowboy marshal’’ whose Old West approach at today’s United States Marshals Service gets him into as much trouble as his quick-draw artistry gets him out of. His long-awaited return adapts Leonard’s 1980 story, City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, across an eight-part series that’s part continuation, part offshoot.

Givens’ Appalachian roots were crucial to Justified’s dramatic universe, and transplanting the Harlan County native to a city with one of the largest black populations in the US is a bold move. A white officer of the law with a history of sanctioned shootings might be a controversial choice of hero in today’s America. But Givens’ appeal has always been as much about his fair play as his gunplay and this chance mission to Michigan, while attempting to reconnect with his teenage daughter, exposes a murky and corrupt justice system.

We encounter Givens on a soon-aborted road trip, as he disarms a pair of carjackers in characteristically carefree fashion, then pays the price in court. ‘‘You were going to put a black man in the trunk of your car?’’ asks defence lawyer Carolyn Wilder (Aunjanue Ellis), who emerges as the perfect foil for Givens. Before the marshal knows it he is embroiled in the death of a judge, and his daughter Willa is being menaced by an itinerant sociopath who makes for a nastier villain than he has ever encountered.

Olyphant has experience of reprising a great role a decade on. For Deadwood: The Movie he returned to his other signature lawman, Sheriff Seth Bullock, 13 years after the gritty TV western was cut off in its prime. Here as there, the actor and character have matured with perfect synchronicity, and Olyphant inhabits a grey-haired and slightly mellower Givens who is realising that there may be more to life than chasing down bad guys. The on-screen blend of tenderness and teenage friction with Willa is no accident either: she is played by his real-life daughter, Vivian.

Scripted by Dave Andron and Michael Dinner, two Justified...