![]() ![]() Overseeing a public auction of some homes-including that of his seamstress girlfriend Grace ( Maura Tierney) and her loutish husband Virgil (Mark Pellegrino)-that is then interrupted by Virgil and his friends’ arrival with rifles, Harris admits to the auctioneer that this has been a clear case of intimidation. Less easy to pin down, however, is his personality. No matter, though hints about his deep, dark distress are impossible to miss. ![]() First introduced crushing, weighing, and consuming his dosage of daily prescription pills, he’s a Gulf War vet and former Pittsburgh detective who’s retreated to this out-of-the-way haven for reasons that aren’t immediately revealed. Generic is the word for it.įrom the start, only Daniels’ Harris stands out. It’s a slowly dying enclave where the air is still, the men carry guns, the women talk tough, the factory has long since closed down, and everyone knows everyone else, and thus happily gather for shotgun weddings where they carouse and fight with down-home rowdiness. Its story is set in fictional Buell, Pennsylvania, which police chief Del Harris (Daniels) explains early on is both geographically and spiritually closer to West Virginia than it is to Pittsburgh. 12 premiere) are a lot of clichéd characters and circumstances, drenched in the usual patina of quiet rustic gloom. Alas, what’s largely on display (at least in the three episodes provided to press ahead of its Sept. A murder mystery populated by working-class folks dealing with various traumas while hanging out in cozy dive bars, around crackling campfires, and amidst dilapidated buildings, it’s a familiar song sung in an even more familiar key-save, that is, for those few moments when its star interjects some unique personality into the proceedings.Īmerican Rust’s title announces the show’s lofty intentions this is a character study-via-genre-thriller that wants to be emblematic of a larger, corrupting national ailment. Like HBO’s limited series, Showtime’s handsome but inert saga (based on Philipp Meyer’s 2009 novel of the same name) concerns a small-town Pennsylvania cop, a puzzling homicide involving many intertwined locals, and an atmosphere of grim rural misery and despair, much of it wrought from a drug epidemic that plagues its inhabitants-including, to some extent, its protagonist. Jeff Daniels is so reliably great that he can make just about any material sing, and that fact is put to the test by American Rust, a nine-part drama destined to be unfavorably compared to Mare of Easttown.
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