The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Hightown'

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

If you like 'The Killing' and '90s crime dramas, you might like 'Hightown,' a moody crime procedural set on Cape Cod and starring James Badge Dale. Hosts: Juliet Litman and Chris Ryan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last night, you spent two hours deciding what to wear to the party. This morning, it'll take you two minutes to list it on Deepop and make your money back. Just grab your phone, snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest. The sheer dress and platform heels you'll never wear again, there's a birthday girl searching for them right now. Your one-and-done look is about to pay for your next night out, or at least the right home. Your style can make you cash.

Start selling on Deepop, where Taste recognizes taste. Welcome to TV concierge. I'm Juliette Litman. Today I'm joined by Chris Ryan and we are here to talk about High Town on Stars. TV Concierge is the podcast where we help you navigate the wide streaming landscape. There's so much TV to watch and everyone's saying they got a lot of time on their hands. So Chris, give us a short pitch on High Town and why you should or should not watch it. It's basically Mystic River, but Mystic Cape. It's a Boston, Massachusetts kind of. crime show. And I think it's really a pretty interesting collision of sensibilities. So this is a show. It comes from a writer named Rebecca Cutter. And it's directed by a woman named Rachel Morrison, who people may know from some of her cinematography credits. She shot Black Panther and she's worked with Dee Reese before. And it's shot on location in Provincetown and is essentially like a kind of epic crime story set in and around the opioid epidemic that's obviously asleep in

in the country. I always find it really interesting when. pop culture kind of catches up with contemporary headlines. Usually there's a little bit of a delay as, you know, Hollywood tries to figure out how they can tell stories about things that are actually happening to real people. And I think we're about to start seeing like a bunch of movies and TV shows that touch on the opioid epidemic. And this is one of the first ones. So I was kind of curious to see how it was handled. And the way that they're handling it is essentially, I would say kind of like a showtime or Cinemax style crime show. It's essentially a murder mystery with some other stuff happening around it

and brings in about six characters, six major characters, and talks about the web kind of woven around this crime that's bringing them all together. Julia, what did you think of Hightown? So I grew up going to Cape Cod. I still go to Cape Cod. I don't know if he'll be going this year due to COVID-19. but boy do I hope so.

I go two towns over. This is in Provincetown. So Cape Cod is shaped like an elbow. Provincetown's at the top. It's like where your fingers are. The well, it's two towns below. And they reference Troro and Easton.

It's all part of the outer Cape, man. So I was like, the Cape, I love it. You know, it plays on my summer nostalgia very much. And on the one hand, it did capture the feeling of Commercial Street in Provincetown really well. And I also think that the Cape opioid epidemic is like under-discussed, very real. don't think it's underdiscuous, but like the local, the people who actually live there, but like the

summer people kind of ignore it. So I thought it was actually like, in some ways, smart and kind of like, though the opioid epidemic is not like new and certainly being overshadowed at the moment, it sort of was like actually a new spin on it because I don't think the people talk about the Cape Cod epidemic that much. So I was like, this is interesting. I felt like the show wasn't exactly sure what it wanted to be. Like the one hand, it felt very much like a racy showtime show to me. for some reason I associate the more like sexually graphic shows of showtime maybe because of like Californication yeah and whatever and like the sex in it was like I was like what's the point they're trying to make here with it supposed to be edgy or is it supposed to like move the plot along

I think it's also a tough time to be a very sex positive show after normal people which I think has changed the TV sex game for a while there was no gold chains in high town yeah connell's chain not present so I was like a little confused about what the show wanted to but nonetheless, there's, how do you say no to like a crime show? I mean, it's like kind of, you know, there's a reason why true crime podcasts are so popular and why true crime novels and TV and movies have like stood the test of time. So when you combine something really topical like opioid epidemic with a murder mystery, it's kind of like hard to look away.

But nonetheless, like I also felt like I couldn't look away because I'm like, what is a show trying to be? That was one of my big questions. Yeah, I think that we've kind of trained our. ourselves in a lot of ways to either have TV in one of two buckets. It's either like super traditional, Grey's Anatomy, like multi-season arcs. We're just kind of living and learning from the people or these bite-sized like six to eight episode limited series where they cover a ton of terrain in a short amount of time and there's a really finite endpoint to it. And I think that this

show exists somewhere in between. Now, I don't necessarily think it's going to go on for multiple, multiple seasons. But I think that it has some of the DNA of a week-to-week procedural, you know? Yeah. It almost reminds me a little bit of the killing. I was just going to say that. I was going to say it reminds me of the killing. Yeah. Chris. But there we go. Pod brothers. You know, like, I just think it's like there's something about it that feels like in another world, this show could have been on CBS or ABC, but it is taking advantage of the fact that it's on stars by showing the really dark underbelly of Provincetown. And I thought, to your point about, like, the sex positivity of the show, that's definitely

there. But I also think that it does a pretty good job showing the sort of the morning after of that. And, you know, people in AA and NA working on their addictions. And the main character played by Monica Raymond is sort of like grappling with her lifestyle kind of coming to a crashing halt because she gets in a car accident in the first episode after a night out partying and she's forced to go into rehab. And while this is happening, a body that she discovers on the beach before she goes into rehab has become like a real who done it. And, you know, I think that it's definitely pretty grimy.

I mean, that was the thing that you always have to sort of grapple with with these crime shows is that like true detective usually brings like a level of mysticism and faux poetry to it. Some of the sort of like more traditional British detective shows usually have a kind of literate wit and a droll. to them. This is a pretty like bare-knuckled like it is what it is show and it's not doing a lot of airbrushing

even though I think in its storytelling or at least in some of its execution there are parts of it that feel like like what we were just saying which is like kind of like

being on network. Yeah. The tone is definitely the weirdest part about it and the part that's the most inscrutable because it's sort of like are you trying to be prestige are you trying to be pulpy?

it almost would have made a little bit more sense if it had gone more British like if you had taken more of like a broad church approach to it where everyone like knows each other and it's like in a small town then with like a couple interlopers who like come to like solve the crime essentially

then I think it would have fallen a lot more into a mold but it also like reminded me of some early 90s like kind of dramas like almost like picket fences where there's like a lot of characters that intersect and know each other, but not all of them are that close. And there's just, like, so many different, like, familiar forces.

But instead of it feeling familiar, it ended up feeling, like, confusing. But, again, like, still really would like to watch it. So... Yeah, I thought that the performances were generally really good. Obviously, like, I'm a huge James Badge Dale fan. He plays a cop named Ray Brusee, who's sort of investigating this body that washes up on the shore.

I thought Monica Raymond was good. She's sort of more famous for doing like the Chicago shows. Like she was on one of the Dick Wolf Chicago shows. And obviously brings like a real like charisma to the part. But this is a character that is really living life out beyond her skis and is going to have to come back down to Earth as gravity kind of draws her back in. You know what's hard. Nailing the summer coastal town vibe. Like outside of Jaws, which is like a singular iconic movie.

and the affair, which is such an insane show that I am hesitant to even mention it in this conversation. It's really hard to genuinely and truly capture the, like, jeunise qua of being either someone who lives in the town or someone who visits the town at, like, a coastal escape. Like, so many shows have tried, even Outer Banks on Netflix. It's, like, kind of similar, though all those people live there. It's really hard to capture that feeling. Like, off the top of my head, I can't think of a show that's really done it well. Like, the only one that I'm like, yeah, they captured the summer feeling really well is saved by the bell when they had the summer season. Would you say Dawson's Creek did it?

Well, that was like supposed to be Cape Cod, but like clearly was North Carolina. I feel like Wilmington, North Carolina is so much more associated with it than Cape Cod even because they like didn't pick an actual town. Like I think that is just setting a really high bar to hit success. because I just can't think of a show that has nailed it. I mean, even like the O.C, which is like coastal and like about like class divides and everything, is not about like local versus visitor or like seedy underbelly of epidemic. It's like it's about people who live in a town that have like very clear class divides. And I think just capturing that is really hard.

I mean, the other movie that comes to mind is summer catch with Freddie Prince Jr. Where he plays in the Cape Cod League, but it's not really going for the same thing. one of the great Lillard performances. That's actually an underrated 90s movie. I agree with. Flaughty watchable, what I say, would dare I say? I don't know. It's just sort of interesting to think about.

Like, that's another one of like the forces that play in the show is like, in the first episode they make such a big deal about it being in Provincetown and kind of capturing the like queer culture of Provincetown. But that's just like a backdrop. I don't know. It's fascinating. I'm kind of curious to see where it goes. Yeah.

I mean, it definitely seems like the kind of show that needs to find its footing as the season goes along. I also hope that it's not a show that is punished for being released when it is in terms of like what people's appetite for something. Like if you get to a Sunday night and you're like, you know what I really want is a punishing show about opioid addiction and murder and corrupt law enforcement. You know, I do. But it's not told in like the zero zero zero ultra cinematic broad like widescreen fashion. It is a it is very much a TV show. So I'll be curious to see how it develops over the course of the next couple episodes,

and I'll be curious to see if it finds an audience. Me too. In general, I like Star's Programming. Most notably, I loved when they had Howard's End. And, you know, power is really popular. Like, they have some hits, but I think it ends up being like a niche audience. So I'm curious to see how it goes. I think if you're, like, looking for a procedural, like, this is a good thing to choose.

I mean, I think the fact that we both referenced the killing and, like, 90s television shows speaks to the fact that it has a little bit of like a throwback feeling, which I kind of enjoy because I think a lot of the time streaming can flatten the sensibility of a show because you ingest it so quickly or it's tailored to a certain platform. And this is like definitely doing its own thing. Yeah, absolutely. So it's, uh, it's high town. It's on stars. It's on Sunday nights. It stars Monica Raymond and James Badgedale. And I recommend it. I recommended it if you like the killing. I recommend it if you like moody, dark crime traumas. I think it's eight episodes. so it will be somewhat digestible and give it a shot.

Thanks so much for listening. More TV concierge tomorrow.