TV Rear-commendations: "City On A Hill" And "Euphoria" Have Promising Starts, Worth A Look

It used to be that summertime was a TV graveyard. Primetime in July and August consisted of re-runs, burn-offs, and cheaply-made shit. Then cable came along and changed all that, dropping A-level shows wherever on the calendar the network thought was best for them. And when streaming became the norm via Rokus and Apple TVs, Netflix, Hulu, and Prime couldn’t make shows fast enough to fill their sometimes wonky interfaces, quality be damned.

So now when I don’t have anymore hockey games to watch, I actually look forward to the plethora of quality TV shows available and my Rokus get put on the workbench.

I watched the first two eps of a pair of shows, one on Showtime and one on HBO, and they both have some real potential.

Set in Boston in 1992, “City On A Hill”, executive produced by Barry Levinson, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and starring Kevin Bacon, is Showtime’s latest prestige drama. Bacon plays dirty fed Jackie Rohr who has more vices than a shop class and Aldis Hodge plays idealistic new DA Decourcy Ward who is brought in from NYC and wants to rip the guts out of what he sees as a rotten, entrenched system. He’s also a black guy which adds a particular wrinkle to this story.

Early ’90s Boston was simmering with even more racial tension than usual after Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife, blamed a black guy, and the cops upended black neighborhoods & civil rights in the ensuing search for a “suspect” who did not exist. Additionally, Boston, like every other U.S. city during the bloody crack era, was dealing with record-high homicides, an increasingly addicted citizenry, and gang violence the likes of which it had never seen before. This is the era and environment in which the show is set, where things are often seen, quite literally, in black and white.

Also notorious in Boston in this same timeframe was armored car robbers, with the vast majority of them hailing from Charlestown. We soon meet the Ryan clan from that one-square mile that produced more bank robbers per capita than any other on the planet per the FBI. Headed by Frankie, played by Charlestown native Jonathan Tucker, the Ryan crew pulls off a score in the first ep that ends horribly and really sends this story’s wheels into motion. Rohr and Ward go from arguing about dropping charges on one of Rohr’s rats to focusing on a botched job down Revere that feels like it’s gonna pull everything together.

“City On A Hill” is supposedly going to be a story about how Boston, with help from citizens, clergy, and community policing, drastically reduced its bloodshed and body count to become a national model for other cities and police departments to follow. That sounds like a worthy series goal that would need need a handful of seasons to fully flesh out. But right now, the early story of Ward setting his sights on the Townies pulling scores and possibly forming an alliance with the oily Rohr has me intrigued as all hell.

When you add in the filming done on location in Boston and actors from Dorchester and Charlestown (Tucker, Kevin Chapman, Bob Wahlberg, Owen Burke), it’s pretty aunthentacious. While it’s definitely early and some Boston tropes might feel a little shopworn, I’m eagerly awaiting to see how this show proceeds and tells its story.

The obvious comparison to make to “Euphoria”, HBO’s latest offering about a fresh-outta-rehab high schooler wending her way through the sex-and-drug-fueled minefield of being a modern day teen girl, is the controversial 1995 film KIDS. Seeing kids fuck, suck, snort, and smoke can be jarring at first so it certainly reminds you of that flick. But that’s where the similarities end. KIDS took place over the course of a day or so and is remembered more for its controversy than its content. “Euphoria” feels like it’s going to do a deep dive on Millennials, to see what makes them tick after a lifetime of bombardment of their senses.

The only thing I knew about Zendaya before this show was that she was a little Disney star with a shitload of hair. She plays Rue Bennett, an intelligent, morose, drug-abusing HS student born just after 9/11 (as the show kind of creepily points out) who is still dealing with the trauma of losing her father to cancer. She’s also been diagnosed with a handful of acronyms that put her on the Big Pharma pill train just after diapers. In addition to loading up on an apothecary’s weekly inventory, Rue acts out, physically fights with her mother, saddens her younger sister, and takes part in plenty of risky behavior. Zendaya is excellent in the role. I don’t know what her experience is with the material in the script but she certainly nails being in the fog of drugs and the sulky sullenness of a teenage girl struggling with trauma, addiction, and trouble at home.

Though Rue is the main character (after two eps), a fair amount of the show is also dedicated to her sometimes equally screwed-up classmates and how they navigate life in a world of sexting, peer pressure, substance abuse, social media, and a seemingly non-stop flow of shit into their lives. One girl meets a middle-aged pervert for sex in a hotel. The football star is a repressed ball of rage who doesn’t know what a healthy relationship is due to what he saw as a child. Everybody seemingly has something going on.

“Euphoria” is probably exaggerated in some ways because this is the entertainment business after all. Yet it’s also one of the shows that horrifies parents and make the childless grateful. It’s also a commentary on a modern world forever altered by technology. There’s a sex crime sequence that shows how quickly and easily we move from one shitstorm to the next. A lot of what the kids deal with is timeless and stuff your grandfather dealt with back in his day. But there’s also much that kids a generation or two ago didn’t have to worry about: having your deflowering posted online, sensory overload since exiting the womb, school shooting escape plans. I don’t know that Millennials have it tougher than previous generations. But they sure have it much different and deal with challenges heretofore unseen. I’m hoping “Euphoria” can unpack some of that. So far, so good.